This session will discuss system migrations at four institutions: the University of Louisville, the University of Northern Iowa, the Loras College Center for Dubuque History, and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Our institutions range from a large public university to a small private college to a large art museum. We all have migrated to the open source systems ArchivesSpace or Samvera’s Hyku in recent years. In addition to the typical challenges faced during a migration, the presenters all had varying degrees of IT support and back-end technical knowledge. This led us to confront (and continue to confront) our own limitations with archival technology and to reach out to other communities for support. We hope to help and show our colleagues that migrations can be successfully completed, even in instances with small staff and minimal resources, and in so doing encourage them in their own efforts to undertake this type of work. We will discuss preparing for the migration, navigating the challenges, implementing the system, tools used, and what we would change about our workflows and processes.
