Settings¶

Global settings¶

Global settings allow administrators to control certain aspects of how AtoM appears and behaves.

To access the “Settings” menu in AtoM, click on the Admin menu in the main menu located in the header bar and select “Settings” from the drop-down menu. You will be redirected to the “Site Settings”, where a number of information areas, including the “Global” settings, should be opened. If closed, simply click on the “Global” blue menu to open the area and view the fields.

This section will describe each field in the “Global” information area:

• Application version
• Check for updates
• Maximum image width
• Results per page
• Accession mask
• Accession counter
• Reference code separator
• Inherit reference code (Information object)
• Sort treeview (information object)
• Sort browser (users)
• Sort browser (anonymous)
• Multiple repositories
• Default archival institution upload limit
• Total space available for uploads
• Upload multi-page files as multiple descriptions
• Show tooltips
• Default publication status
• SWORD deposit directory

Hovering over each field will also provide additional information on that field - it will appear in an “information box” below your cursor.

When making changes to the global settings in AtoM, don’t forget to click the “Save” button in the button block, located at the bottom of the “Global” settings information area.

Check for updates¶

If yes is selected, an administrator will automatically receive a notification if a newer version of the AtoM software has been released and can be installed. This notification will appear in the browser for authenticated (i.e. logged in) users, as an orange bar across the top of the application alerting users to the newest release available.

This image shows a themed AtoM installation at the City of Vancouver Archives, showing an update notification in orange at the top of the screen. Only authenticated users will see this notification.

For more information on updates, see:

• Search for updates

Accession mask¶

By default, AtoM creates the accession record identifier as a unique number compiled from YEAR-MONTH-DAY-Incremental#, expressed as %Y-%m-%d/#i. This mask, or default counter, can be changed by administrators to suit institutional needs.

For more information on accession records, see Accessions.

Inherit reference code (information object)¶

When this is set to “yes”, the reference code string will be built using the archival description identifier plus the identifier of all its ancestors (parent records), as well as the repository identifier and country code if they have been entered. The string will appear in this order with the applicable elements:

• Country code (derived from the country code of the country entered into the contact information of the related archival institution)
• Repository identifier (derived from the identifier field on the related archival institution)
• Fonds/Collection level identifier
• Series identifier
• Subseries identifier
• File identifier
• Item identifier

When reference code inheritance is enabled, AtoM will also display the full reference code in the edit page for archival descriptions, as contextual information to help orient the user.

Important

Whether reference code inheritance is turned on or not, the sort button option on the archival description browse page will still sort by full inherited reference code, and not by identifier alone. This setting only affects the display. For more information on sorting, see: Sort button.

See also

• Control area

Site information¶

In this section, administrators can change the site title and site description, and set a Base URL for the application.

The site title and description will appear in the AtoM header bar, if they are included in the default page elements. See below for an image of where the Title and description appear, and more about setting the visibility of default page elements.

The base URL is used to create absolute URLs included in XML exports (e.g. MODS and EAD exports). For example, your AtoM site is made up a series of web pages. Each page has a full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) something like http://www.your-atom-site.com/your-description. The Base URL is the part of this URL that does not change - in this example, http://www.your-atom-site.com.

Setting this value will ensure that links included in your XML exports will be properly formed. Do not include a slash / at the end of your base URL - AtoM will automatically add this when building the absolute URLs.

To save any modifications, click the “Save” button located below the “Site Description” field.

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Default page elements¶

This section allows administrators to enable or disable certain page elements. Unless they have been overridden by a specific theme, these settings will be used site-wide.

Checked boxes will display the corresponding element and unchecked boxes will hide the element. The logo, site title, and site description all appear as part of the AtoM header bar:

For more information on page elements, see Themes & Theming.

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Default templates¶

AtoM ships with default page templates for viewing and editing archival descriptions, authority records, and archival institutions. For more information on the standards on which these templates are based, see Descriptive standards.

The “Name” column shows the types of entities that are described in AtoM: “Archival descriptions”, “Authority records” and “Archival institutions”. Drop-down menus of descriptive standards for each are provided under the “Value” column. Administrators may select one for each entity using the drop-down menus.

Once changes have been saved, records on the site will be able to be edited and viewed in the templates that have been selected.

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User interface labels¶

Users of AtoM interact with six main entities: accession records, archival descriptions, authority records, archival institutions, functions and terms.

AtoM is flexible enough to support descriptions a variety of cultural materials such as archival, library, museum, and art gallery collections. The code, therefore, uses generic terms for entities. Administrators can specify how they want these terms to appear in the user interface labels to suit the institution’s collections. The default labels that ship with AtoM are terms typically used by archival institutions.

The “Name” column shows the generic entity name and the “Value” column shows AtoM’s default user interface labels. The following is a list of the generic terms and their AtoM user interface labels. Click on each label below to see glossary definitions and descriptions of how the terms are used in AtoM.

• informationobject: archival description
• actor: Authority record
• creator: Creator
• repository: Archival institution
• function: Function
• term: Term
• subject: Subject
• collection: Fonds
• holdings: Holdings
• place: Place
• name: Name
• digitalobject: Digital object
• physicalobject: Physical storage
• mediatype: Media type
• materialtype: Material type (general material designations used in the Canadian Rules for Archival Description).
• facetstitle: facets title
• access_disallow_warning: Used for customizable access restriction statements when access to a digital object is disallowed via an associated PREMIS rights statement. See: Rights, specifically Make rights actionable on digital objects for more information.
• access_conditional_warning: Used for customizable access restriction statements when access to a digital object is set to conditional via an associated PREMIS rights statement. See: Rights, specifically Make rights actionable on digital objects for more information.
• genre: Term for the Genre access point taxonomy, currently only available on the RAD template. It appears as a facet filter in the archival description browse and search pages - this label will change the display in the facet headers.

User interface labels can be changed by administrators by entering a new label(s) into the field(s) under the “Value” column. Changes will only be saved once the “Save” button is clicked. Changing the label will change its appearance throughout AtoM for both authenticated (logged-in) and public users.

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Add/Remove languages¶

AtoM relies on volunteer translators from the community to support new language options. The translations are managed using Transifex and community members can learn more about contibuting translations here.

The language menu will display the languages that are currently available in your AtoM application.

To add a language:

1. Select a language from the drop-down menu located under “Language code”.
2. Click the “Add” button.
3. AtoM adds the language and refreshes the page; the added language will now appear in the “Add/remove language” section in “Settings”, as well as in the drop-down menu of the language navigation menu located at the top right corner of the header bar.

To continue adding languages, repeat these steps as required.

To remove a language:

1. Click the delete located in the third (blank) column next to the language.
2. AtoM will delete the language and refresh the page; the deleted language will no longer appear in the “Add/remove language” section in “Settings”, nor in the drop-down menu of the language navigation menu located at the top right corner of the header bar.

To continue removing languages, repeat these steps as required.

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OAI repository¶

Open Archives Initiative, or OAI, is a protocol for metadata harvesting that allows automatic data harvesting and crawling within other systems that support OAI harvesters.

Comprehensive documentation on each field in the OAI repository settings is included in the OAI repository documentation, here:

• Configure AtoM’s OAI repository settings

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Finding aid¶

These settings configure how AtoM generates finding aids from archival descriptions. For more information, see Print finding aids; specifically, Finding aid settings includes a description of each settings field.

Security panel¶

Limit administrator functionality by IP address

This feature allows administrators to limit administrator functionality to one or more IP addresses or IP ranges. Separate multiple IP address or ranges by semicolons, and use a dash to indicate an IP range. For example:

• 192.168.0.1 (single IP address)
• 192.168.0.1;192.168.0.255 (multiple unique IP addresses)
• 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.255 (IP range)

Require SSL for all administrator functionality

This feature allows administrators the option to enable the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), which is a protocol for security over a computer network. It works by layering the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) with the SSL/TLS protocol (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security).

Select yes to require all HTTP requests to be redirected to the HTTPS server, changing the URI scheme from “http” to “https.”

Require strong passwords

This feature allows administrators to enhance login validation by requiring the use of strong passwords. Strong passwords use least 8 characters, and contain characters from 3 of the following classes:

1. Upper case letters
2. Lower case letters
3. Numbers
4. Special characters

Choose “yes” to require authenticated (logged-in) users to have strong passwords.

Permissions¶

Permissions settings are used by administrators to make PREMIS rights records in archival descriptions actionable on attached digital objects. For more instructions and examples, please see Make rights actionable on digital objects.

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