The HRC thanks Linda Hocking, Curator of Library and Archives at the Litchfield Historical Society, for serving as guest author for the following entry. Linda holds an M.S. in library and information science from the University of Illinois. She serves on the board of the Connecticut League of History Organizations and the State Historical Records Advisory Board.

Has your institution thought about making its archival collections more accessible to the public, but not known how best to do so?  If so, Archon might be the solution you've been looking for.

Archon is a free, open-source archival information system created by the University of Illinois to enable repositories of any size to easily publish online finding aids for their archival holdings.

It is installed on the organization's Web server and data is input over the internet. The software incorporates the use of standard archival practice, providing tips about descriptive rules near the fields they apply to. Information is exportable, making it simple to contribute your institution's records to any library catalog, the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, and other digital repositories such as Connecticut Archives Online.

The Litchfield Historical Society installed Archon in March 2009. After experiencing some difficulty with the installation process, I contacted the developers who were helpful and made sure our installation was completed successfully.

When we have questions, they often can be answered by Archon's online user forum. In the forum, both the developers of the software and other users provide feedback and advice for dealing with any problems that arise.

While there currently are two open-source archival management systems, Archon and Archivists Toolkit (AT), this may soon change. AT provides different features than Archon, such as the ability to generate reports dealing with many archival functions including appraisal, accessioning, and processing. Developers are now working to create one, integrated product that will provide the best features of both Archon and the Archivists Toolkit.

The major factor in our decision to use Archon was that AT does not generate online finding aids, which was our primary goal. So far we have entered approximately 175 finding aids with varying levels of description for collections ranging in size from one item to 20 linear feet. As a result, we are experiencing both an increase in research requests and an increase in the specificity of those requests.

Archon users click a link to add items to their "research cart." On site researchers can then print the list for staff retrieval. Off site patrons can either mail it with a research request or send it to the archivist via e-mail. They can even register as a researcher and set up an appointment to come in. Archon also has a "Digital Content" area which allows us to upload images of record creators, transcriptions of items in the collections, or earlier versions of finding aids.

Archon has proven to be a valuable tool for the Litchfield Historical Society, and I would recommend it to other small repositories.

Check out how the Litchfield Historical Society has used Archon to create finding aids for their archival collections.