Welcome to the ICA-AtoM Software Project discussion group. This will be a forum for testers, users and developers of the software to discuss its ongoing development as well as a place for those interested the project to ask questions and give feedback.

As a way to get started, I am copying a recent post to the ICA-L listserv which provides some context for this project:

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-----Original Message-----
Sent: Fri Oct 5 02:20:08 MDT 2007
To: ica-l@mailman.srv.ualberta.ca
Subject: [Ica-l] ICA's own open source software initiative

Dear Inger,

My name is Peter Van Garderen. I am the lead developer of the ICA's own
open source software initiative, the ICA-AtoM project, so I hope I can
shed some light on your question.

Milovan noted in his initial reply to your question:

> Alfresco is probably the most advanced as an Open Source software. You
> can download it from their web site www.alfresco.com

Alfresco is an open-source product that focuses on web content, document
and records management (referred to as 'Enterprise Content Management
(ECM)' here in North America). I don't think it offers traditional archival
description functionality. It is a well-funded project with a really
great user interface but I believe KnowledgeTree has been around longer
and is a more mature platform if you are looking for an open-source
document/records management application. (http://www.knowledgetree.com/)

As far as free, open-source software specifically for archival
description, there are currently four projects of which I am aware:

1) ICA-AtoM: http://ica-atom.org

2) Archivist's Toolkit: http://www.archiviststoolkit.org/

3) Archon: http://www.archon.org/

4) Tabularium: http://tabularium.records.nsw.gov.au/
(NOTE: freeware NOT open-source)

Tabularium is a stand-alone, Windows-based, Microsoft Access
application. NOTE, however, that is only made available as 'freeware' not open-source software which is due, I assume, to the fact that Microsoft owns the license to the MS-Access code.

Archivist's Toolkit is a Java-based desktop/network application. It's primary goal is to support the internal processing of archival materials and, as such, does not have a web-based access interface.

Archon is a PHP-based web application. It's primary goal is to make it
easy for small archival institutions to put EAD finding aids online.
Both these projects use EAD as their core data model and I believe both
are English-language only applications.

ICA-AtoM is a PHP-based web application. It's primary goal is to assist
archival institutions in preparing ICA standard compliant archival
descriptions and making those available online. It is multi-lingual and
supports multi-institutional deployments. It uses ICA-ISAD(G),
ICA-ISAAR(CPF), ICA-ISIAH and ICA-ISAF as its core data model with
flexible crosswalk and templating support for alternate standards such
as Dublin Core, EAD, MODS, etc..

Over the past year we have developed two working prototypes of the
ICA-AtoM software. Just this week we are completing the third round of
development.

This will result in the first ICA-AtoM beta version that will go into
limited user testing later this month. The latest development iteration
included a major upgrade to the data model to anticipate future digital
repository compatibility as well as optimizing it to support ICA
standards while still maintaining a sound logical model (e.g. by making
ISIAH institution descriptions an extension of ISAAR authority files, as
per a recent ICA-L discussion).

We will be demonstrating and discussing the ICA-AtoM beta version at the
upcoming ICA CITRA Conference in Quebec City (November 2007). The
software code repository will be made available to other developers in
late 2007. We will be conducting more rounds of user beta testing in
Winter and Spring 2008. This is all in preparation of the formal launch
of ICA-Atom 1.0 at the ICA Congress in Kuala Lumpur in 2008. We hope to
support this launch with a series of presentations on the user testing
experience and tutorial workshops to help institutions get started with
implementing ICA-AtoM.

I hope that I've been able to provide some useful information in
response to your query. Given the limited financial and technical
resources available in the archival community and the nature of our work
(preserving information in public trust), I believe it is important that
the community gets behind open-source initiatives (whether ICA-AtoM or
others) to take ownership of the technology for ourselves and to share
the burden and rewards of ICT implementation.

Best regards,

Peter Van Garderen
Lead Developer, ICA-AtoM Project
Vancouver, Canada