NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                       DATE: 1/12/07 CONTACT: LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATION ASST., (413) 545-0162   FIVE COLLEGE LIBRARIES HELP DEVELOP ARCHIVISTS’ TOOLKIT    Amherst, MA – Since 2004, the Five Colleges, Inc., University of California, San Diego, and New York University have collaborated together on an $847,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop and implement the Archivists’ Toolkit™.  Kelcy Shepherd, Five College Archives Analyst, served on the Archivists’ Toolkit Project Team. The Archivists’ Toolkit™ Version 1.0 is now available for download at http://www.archiviststoolkit.org/ and is being offered under an Educational Community License (ECL).  The Archivists’ Toolkit is the first open source archival data management  system to provide integrated support for accessioning, description, donor  tracking, name and subject authority work, and location management for archival materials.  The Archivists' Toolkit is intended to facilitate archival processing in large and small archives alike.  Until now, there was nothing akin to a library management system tailored to the needs of archival repositories, nor was it feasible for many archives to keep up to date with today’s evolving and complex metadata standards. The Toolkit will empower archives, small and large, by providing them with the tools for more easily establishing their presence on the Web and for sharing information on their holdings with other repositories and union catalogs. The Toolkit is an open source software system for managing archival information. Its objective is to decrease the time and cost associated with archival processing and to promote the standardization of archival information.  The Archivists’ Toolkit addresses and integrates a broad range of archival functions; it provides a single, consistent, and reliable tool for managing collection processing, accessioning, description, resource location, and provenance registration. In addition, the Toolkit will provide the archivist with a variety of outputs, including EAD (Encoded Archival Description) encoded finding aids and METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) digital objects. Automating such outputs will considerably lessen the cost now expended on producing them. To ensure the development of a truly comprehensive software tool, the Archivists’ Toolkit was developed with guidance from the archival community and the direct involvement of thirty archival repositories that participated in the software design and testing processes. Among these were the archives and special collections of the Five Colleges, Incorporated: Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Hampshire College Archives, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, Smith College Archives, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, and University of Massachusetts Amherst, Special Collections and University Archives. The Andrew W. Mellon foundation recently approved an additional $957,000 to support continued development of the Archivists’ Toolkit.   For more information, contact Kelcy Shepherd at 413-545-0074 or kshepher@library.umass.edu.