When I try to access the ArchivesSpace Help Center, I get a blank page or the message “You don’t have access to this space”. But I have successfully accessed the Help Center before. What’s wrong? That is the Confluence wiki’s way of saying that you need to log in. Go to the top right corner of the page and click the sign-in prompt – an arrow pointing at a right square bracket.

When I try to access the staff interface (https://arstaff.lib.harvard.edu) my browser spins for a while and then I get the message “This site can’t be reached”. To access ArchivesSpace, you need to be connected to the appropriate VPN tunnel for your unit. See the Login request page for more information.

During spreadsheet import, the loader fails to add some or all components. Errors in the processing report are generic or might refer to a list of attribute values. This failure usually indicates that the target component (the parent or sibling at the insertion point) contains an invalid attribute. A common case is an invalid Date Uncertainty value. The solution is to find and fix the invalid value then retry the import. If the problem component can’t be opened in Edit view, you will need to delete and recreate it.

That error refers to the Identifier field in the "Basic Information" section at top of the resource. The corresponding EAD element is unitid. The error indicates that the call number or other identifier in that field is not unique in the repository (i.e., another resource record in that repo is using the same identifier). The unitID must be unique according to the EAD schema. Making the identifier unique should resolve the issue.

ArchivesSpace exports new and updated EADs to LibraryCloud (a hub of Harvard Library bibliographic metadata) on a nightly basis. If recent EAD changes do not appear in LibraryCloud on this schedule, there are a few possible reasons: The EAD is somehow invalid. Best practice is to export the resource record and validate it, then locate the issue in ASpace staff mode and fix it. If a component can’t be edited because of an invalid attribute, you must delete and recreate the component with a valid attribute. If updates at the digital object level are not visible in LibraryCloud, the resource record may need to be Saved. ASpace export of an EAD is triggered by a change in the “Last Modified” date stamp of the top level resource record. ASpace has a known bug in which updating a digital object record does not change the resource-level modification date. To trigger an export, in staff mode open the resource in Edit mode and click the top level Save option.

This error is usually caused by an invalid attribute value somewhere in that component. The most common cases are an invalid Date Type, Instance Type, or Archival Record Level. These values leak into the system during EAD xml import (ASpace does not validate incoming xml imports against the EAD schema.) To fix, you must identify the invalid value, then delete/recreate the component and assign the correct value.

A 504 gateway timeout error indicates that the server didn’t receive a timely response from another server it needed to access in order to complete a request. This can happen because the other server is not functioning properly, overloaded, or down. Sometimes a 504 timeout affects a single record (e.g., trying to view or edit an oversized Note field in a resource record in staff mode) and other times there is a system-wide issue (e.g., network congestion or server overload). These timeouts are usually temporary, so waiting 5 minutes and trying again is one strategy. But they sometimes occur in clusters and for longer periods, in which case you should report this to LTS Support.

The id.lib persistent url to a finding aid in HAD has two forms: a url that points to the finding aid’s top level (https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/[EADID]/catalog) and a url that points to the component being viewed (https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/[component_REFID]/catalog). For the id.lib url to work, the [EADID] and [component_REFID] values must be unique within the owning repository. That will always be true for the EADID but not necessarily true for the component REFID because ASpace does not require the REFID to be unique. When creating a component, you can leave the REFID field blank and ASpace will create a unique value in that field. But if you manually assign a REFID value to a component e.g., maybe it’s a series level component and you input the series level (Series 1B.) as REFID. ASpace lets you do that but the resulting component id.lib url may not work if not unique. An example: URL to top level: https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/xyz00218/catalog (works) URL to component: https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/IB./catalog (doesn’t work; the REFID value “IB.” is not unique within the repository – Series 1B is a common component in this repository’s finding aids)

The QA instance of the PUI is only accessible if your are connected by your department’s VPN when pointing a browser to https://aspace-qa.lib.harvard.edu (the same VPN you use to access the staff interface).

Links in a finding aid that point to external digital content may not work for several reasons. The link added to the File URI field in the FIle Versions section of the Digital object record may have a typo. Inspect the File URI value in staff mode and update if needed. The link is correct, but the digital content was just deposited to the DRS and sometimes can take up to 3 days to land in delivery storage. Delivery services are temporarily down or very slow to respond. Try links again in 5 minutes and if still an issue, contact LTS Support.

This sometimes happens -- during the spreadsheet import of new archival and/or digital objects, the reindexing step sometimes fails for the PUI. Usually just touching the associated archival object record (make and save a small change) in staff mode will correct it.