ArchivesSpace, with nothing to install.
Acervo sends curated archival description straight into your repository through the ArchivesSpace API. No plugin, no server access, no waiting on your hosting provider.
Built inside an ArchivesSpace migration.
Acervo's founding collection runs on ArchivesSpace. The Olga Iglesias Project had to move from manual, paper-first description to a digital catalog fast, and the work fell to one person. A solo practitioner needed help that did not exist.
So we built it. Software that drafts description at scale, defers every judgment to the archivist, and files the results into ArchivesSpace without a plugin, a developer, or a migration consultant. The integration on this page is the one we needed ourselves. That is why it refuses to duplicate records, refuses to rewrite your description, and leaves receipts everywhere it goes.
What the integration does
Three verbs cover it.
Enrich.
Records you already have
Curated agents and subjects, appended to the records your team already wrote. Additive only. Acervo starts from your record exactly as it stands, so the existing description is never rewritten and never removed.
Create.
Records you lack
Every document becomes an archival object under the target you choose, with dates, extents, notes, and linked agents included, sent as one curated batch rather than one record at a time.
Correct.
What it already made
Fix a name, re-curate, send again. Records update in place, identified by external identifiers Acervo stamps on everything it creates, so a re-send never duplicates and never moves a record.
The fine print, up front
No plugin, ever. Hosted or self-managed, Acervo drives the REST API your instance already exposes. Nothing to maintain through upgrades.
Browsable targets. Pick the collection or series from a tree of your own repository.
Encrypted credentials. Stored encrypted, used only to talk to your instance.
Receipts everywhere. Every send leaves a provenance event on the record and a send log in Acervo.
Curation holds. Agents resolve through your curation, so merged spellings and chosen labels hold at send time.
Rich agent records. Created agents carry authorized and variant name forms plus identifiers from multiple authority files.
Your vocabularies. Controlled values are read from your instance at runtime, and sends respect them.
Check our work.
An integration that promises to leave receipts everywhere it goes should show its own. Here are the same three verbs, live in our own repository. Click any frame to read it at full size.
Enrich.
The same record, before and after
One letter from the founding collection, Letter from Isaac Stern to Pablo Casals, 1962 June 28, enriched in place through this integration. Acervo read the letter and surfaced eighteen identities, an archivist chose two, and the record kept every word it already had.
The letter's record before the send. No agent links yet.
Eighteen identities surfaced from one letter. The archivist ticks two.
Casals and Stern appended with their roles. Every word already on the record, untouched.
A Processed event stamped on the record, naming Acervo as the executing program.
The agent record itself. Identifiers from three authority files as linked Record IDs, the authorized name form, and the relationship to Festival Casals asserted by the document's own line. EAC-CPF and MARCXML exports sit in the toolbar, because this is a real agent record, not a string.
Create.
From empty to described, one send
The Correspondence sub-series under Festival Casals, Inc. held nothing. One item-records send later it holds the letters, each with a title and date drafted from the document itself, and every created record carries its own receipt.
The sub-series with nothing beneath it, then the same sub-series after one send. Titles and dates drafted from the letters themselves.
Each record arrives described, a scope note grounded in the letter down to its physical condition, and carries its own Processed event.
Correct.
One field corrected, same record
The roster's date was a year off. The archivist edited the Document date field in Acervo, one field with one home, and sent again. The record updated in place under the same Ref ID, the title recomposed itself, and the raw extraction stayed on file beneath the correction.
The record as first created, dated 1965. Note the Ref ID.
One edit to the Document date field. The title recomposes on the spot, and the evidence line keeps the raw extraction, written as 1965-06-17.
The same record, the same Ref ID, now 1966. Updated in place, never duplicated.
The creation and the correction each left their event.
What we send to ArchivesSpace
Two of the actual requests, abbreviated. The first creates an agent with its authorized name form, the variant spellings found in the documents kept alongside it, and identifiers from more than one authority file. The second enriches an existing record, where everything already present is preserved and the curated access points append.
Questions ArchivesSpace administrators ask
Try every send in a hosted sandbox.
Every free account can enable a hosted ArchivesSpace workspace from integration settings, try item and access-point sends end to end, and switch to a saved institutional connection whenever ready. No consultation required, nothing to install, nothing of yours to break.
If your institution runs ArchivesSpace, hosted or self-managed, with one archivist or a whole department, we are glad to work alongside you through your first curated sends. Your feedback shapes what ships.
Your backlog, described. Your repository, intact.
Curate a batch in Acervo, send it into ArchivesSpace, and re-send fearlessly. That is the whole promise.