Description
Archivists and librarians who use Archon to present their finding guides online are faced with a dilemma: while their institutions actively use Archon, the open source software product ceased to be supported by its original developers in 2012 and is in danger of becoming increasingly unstable. Many in the archival community do not want to abandon Archon but feel they have no choice. As a solution, a group of college and university archivists and librarians decided in early 2016 to take matters into their own hands and pool resources to pay a developer, LibraryHost, to update Archon's open source code. At the completion of the project, the group will make the code freely available to the entire user community. Because Archon was developed by archivists for archivists, the resulting Archon Stability Update seemed the natural extension of the product's genesis. Representatives from the project will share their perspectives as Archon users committed to continuing the viability of the product, and address issues of sustainability as the Archon code moves forward with community support.
Start Date
15-3-2017 2:15 PM
End Date
15-3-2017 3:15 PM
Should I Stay or Should I Go: What to Do When Your Beloved Software is No Longer Supported? Update it Yourself!
Archivists and librarians who use Archon to present their finding guides online are faced with a dilemma: while their institutions actively use Archon, the open source software product ceased to be supported by its original developers in 2012 and is in danger of becoming increasingly unstable. Many in the archival community do not want to abandon Archon but feel they have no choice. As a solution, a group of college and university archivists and librarians decided in early 2016 to take matters into their own hands and pool resources to pay a developer, LibraryHost, to update Archon's open source code. At the completion of the project, the group will make the code freely available to the entire user community. Because Archon was developed by archivists for archivists, the resulting Archon Stability Update seemed the natural extension of the product's genesis. Representatives from the project will share their perspectives as Archon users committed to continuing the viability of the product, and address issues of sustainability as the Archon code moves forward with community support.