SRUC DRYAD AtoM Installation with CALM Migration

Published: 17/09/2021

Scottish Rural College (SRUC) was established in 2012 when the Scottish Agricultural College was merged with Barony, Elmwood and Oatridge colleges. The college's roots go back over 100 years and it consists of a number of campuses across Scotland. The college has an extensive archive of data relating to its historic institutions and were looking for the optimal solution to manage, host and present this data.

At the point at which they approached Max, SRUC were using AtoM version 2.3.1 to house their archived materials. They were ideally looking for a solution which allowed them to upgrade to the latest tested version of AtoM, as well as providing secure hosting. They additionally wanted their existing catalogue held in the older version of AtoM to be migrated to the new installation.

Max's DRYAD Archive Management service provides a raft of features designed to provide a secure, intuitive archive management solution. In addition to the AtoM version upgrade to 2.6.2 which SRUC required, Max were able to offer hosting on a secure, private and seperate UK based server. Max were also able to provide ongoing AtoM maintenance including scheduled upgrades, initial training and user guides for the core team at SRUC, new release training, ongoing support and future proofing of AtoM in the form of access to guidance and knowledge-sharing.

As with all Max projects, communication was at the heart of the process. A schedule was designed to allow for the completion of the project in a timely manner and weekly Zoom meetings were arranged to update SRUC on progress as well as to take on board feedback. Additionally, staff working on the project communicated regularly via email ensuring that details could be dealt with on the spot rather than having to be addressed during formal meetings.

Max possess a wealth of experience working with AtoM and the IT department have tried and tested procedures in place to carry out AtoM upgrades. We were therefore able to carry out the upgrade quickly and efficiently, ensuring that the new installation was working as desired and that all data was backed up before migrating existing data from SRUC's existing AtoM installation to the new one.

Secure hosting on a separate, UK-based server is an integral part of the DRYAD service and again, Max's IT department were able to carry out this aspect of the project quickly and efficiently. Prior to moving to a new host, all data was backed up and stored in line with Max's protocols and the process was completed quickly. In addition, Max backs up data at regular intervals in order to mitigate against any 'worst case scenario' events and similar mitigation procedures are enacted by our hosting provider.

Max were able to again leverage their skills and experience working with AtoM to provide SRUC with an intuitive, user-friendly, branded user interface for AtoM which dovetailed visually with SRUC's main website whilst at the same time retaining all of AtoM's functionality.

As the project drew to a close Max provided initial AtoM training to the core team at SRUC which included the provision of user guides and remain on hand to maintain AtoM, including implementing scheduled upgrades to new releases from Artefactual and offering ongoing support.

View the SRUC AtoM Installation

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