We are excited to announce the beta launch of collectiveaccesscommunity.org, a new resource for users of CollectiveAccess. Information on this website is drawn from the collective wisdom of the CollectiveAccess user community, and is meant to to foster collaboration and contribute to users’ ability to better deploy the software to make their collections accessible. The site seeks to address users with various levels of comfort with technology and computer programming.

Resources on the website include:

• An extensive list of resources related to CollectiveAccess (including links to video tutorials, documentation and workflows, GitHub projects, and academic literature on the software).

• Brief tutorials and quick tips based on questions commonly asked by new users. (Documentation currently available on the website includes tips for sorting entities by last name, making sure your PDFs are searchable, and interpreting some error messages).

• Interviews with archivists and librarians that use CollectiveAccess. Our first two interviews feature Karma Foley (of the Smithsonian Channel) and Milo Miller (of the Queer Zine Archive Project [QZAP]). New interviews will be added every few weeks through the end of 2016.

More material will be added to the site on an ongoing basis. (Stay tuned for some exciting soon-to-come additions!)

The site was developed by archivists at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, with funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources. Project management by Rachel Mattson, website architecture and design by Karen Li-Lun Hwang, site content by Jonathan Farbowitz, Liza Harrell-Edge, and others.

We are seeking documentation from users of CollectiveAccess to post on the site, as well as information about plugins, mods, or other coding projects related to CollectiveAccess. We welcome contributions from archivists with limited or no coding skills as well as from experienced coders—and everyone in between. Please send any information or questions to rachel [at] lamama [dot] org.

Enjoy the site and please let us know if you would like to contribute in any way!

In open-sourceness,
Rachel