Friday, March 18, 2016

'A' is for AtoM

'A' is for AtoM. Jenny Mitcham. Digital Archiving at the University of York. 18 March 2016.
     Jenny has been working on an implementation of Access to Memory (AtoM) for a couple of years and provides an interesting list of information about it, the A to Z* of implementing AtoM. "It turns out that deciding to adopt a system is relatively simple, working out exactly how you are going to use it is far more complex!" A few that I found that apply in most software situations:
  • B is for Business as Usual: Any organisation when adopting a new and complex system like AtoM needs to think beyond initial implementation and consider how the solution can be embedded into their workflows for the longer term?
  • E is for Experimenting: We discovered that data may not always import in the way you expect.
  • J is for Just Start!: Reading the documentation is essential but testing and experimenting with AtoM are really the best ways of working it out.
  • N is for Not Perfect: AtoM (like all complex systems) has its limitations.
  • Q is for Quality: In an ideal world, all our data within AtoM would be of a high quality....but we do not live in an ideal world. Accepting that legacy data will not always meet current standards or be as accurate as we would like is key to moving forward with a system such as this.
  • T is for Training: Training is not just a one off exercise.

No comments: