I have found that Archon is incredibly useful in managing our finding aids. 

The EAD export bulk export will be very helpful when preparing documents for
entry into ArchiveGrid. 

My staff is very please with the current modular design of the program.  It is much
easier to make code changes when we create localizations for the system.

I am also impressed with the attention to detail when it comes to making the
program Google friendly.  It is very easy to search for finding aids in Google and
have my material come up in the Google results list.

I certainly support the continued development of Archon.

As the coordinator of a statewide partnership of libraries, archives and museums in Florida, and as manager of a program to expand archival information-sharing statewide, I can say without hesitation that Archon has made my job much easier over the past year. Archival description is a multi-faceted process, and for the past decade has demanded a great degree of technical sophistication in organizations wishing to encode and share information about the archival holdings. Since the advent of Archon in late 2006, I have noticed many organizations with limited technical resources, suddenly being able to create and con tribute finding aids (inventories) to a statewide databased named Archives Florida (http://palmm.fcla.edu/afl). Some of the smallest producers of archival finding aids have moved to being the largest producers of archival descriptive records, once they have begun to use Archon. My organization, the Florida Center for Library Automation, now supports Archon for multiple archives and special collections departments, and the list of Archon adopters in the state is growing! As someone who has used and developed a wide variety of software and tools to help libraries, archives and museums, I have not seen any other tool  that makes the process of describing archival resources so easy. I fully intend to keep using and supporting Archon, but do know  the UIUC can only devote a finite amount of staff and money to  keep the project moving forward with new programming, documentation, etc. Andrew W. Mellon Foundation support will accelerate enhancements to the Archon system, and will promote faster adoption by more archives, libraries and museums in Florida and around the world. Kudos to the Archon project team!

It is remarkable to me that Archon was developed using internal resources at the Univ. of Illinois. It is a simple yet elegant solution to a problem that has troubled the profession for several years: the lack of a user-friendly tool that enables archivists to author and disseminate finding aids without having to become programmers or XML experts. I have implemented or helped to implement EAD in multiple institutions over the past ten years, and I have also served as a trainer in a statewide EAD training program in Florida. In all that time, the top comment I have heard from archivists is that they do not have the technological knowledge or support to implement and manage EAD at their repositories. For several years, I have been using and promoting the use of a homegrown solution (templates using NoteTab Light), but no matter how much customization I and my colleagues made to our templates to make them more user-friendly, we still heard from potential EAD implementors that they required an even simpler tool. Well, Archon is proving to be the answer everyone has been looking for. Archivists do not have to become programmers in order to create and serve up their finding aids. The Illinois team deserve acclaim for their accomplishments (as does Illinois for funding this project), but I believe this is only the start of something big. Once this project receives outside support, as it deserves, I think Archon may dramatically reform the way in which this profession creates and delivers descriptive information.

- John Nemmers, University of Florida

As the head of a small academic archives with a correspondingly small staff, I have welcomed the development of Archon  as a solution to many of our most pressing needs. While we have had many internal databases, collections of inventories, and web pages to maintain bibliographic control and deliver information on our collections, we have often struggled creating these systems in a coordinated way, and according to accepted and uniform stands. The development of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) was much needed, but the amount of labor and training required to create archival finding aids using this standard caused us to despair of ever implementing it. And while we've developed web pages in order to deliver collection information  to users, these pages  were developed piecemeal and are not consistently formatted or searchable.

Archon holds the promise to solve many of these problems. It provides an integrated collection management system that organizes information in one system, according to accepted standards such as EAD. It provides a "fill in the box" approach to data entry, which is perfect in an environment of part-time and student employees (and overworked archivists with many other duties) without extensive technical training. We've been entering data in our installation of Archon for over a year and welcome the release of the latest version. Without a doubt, Archon promises to be a wonderful tool for small archives like us (and indeed, archival institutions of all sizes). The Archon project richly deserves support from the Mellon Award to further develop and refine it, and fulfill its great promise.

The ARCHON project, developed by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), has provided a valuable descriptive tool.  First, ARCHON has enabled archivists to produce effective finding aids in encoded archival description (EAD), catalog records in MARC21, as well as associate digital objects in the finding aid at any level of the collection hierarchy.  It makes it possible to standardize all of our finding aids.  The best part, I believe, is ARCHON hosts these finding aids in a searchable database.  What a valuable asset to those of us in smaller institutions that do not have a full time programmer or systems department devoted solely to special collections projects.

Secondly, ARCHON is involved in innovative developments of archival description, including cooperative ventures that have resulted in the exchange of finding aid information among repositories.  Thanks to the efforts of UIUC, ARCHON is provided at no cost to individual archives.  In addition, they established a listserv for those using ARCHON.  This has helped institutions, both large and small, discuss the program itself, ask questions about descriptive practices and allow the exchange of ideas on future improvements to the program and descriptive process itself.

The intent of ARCHON is to provide an easy, fill in the blank program that can be used by all sorts of institutions at no cost.  Their mantra, input once, output many.  It follows international standards, DACS, MARC21 and EAD.  By allowing archivists to create descriptive products (finding aids, catalog records, digital collection library) in an online database, as well as cultivating a cooperative atmosphere for those institutions using ARCHON, I believe that ARCHON and its designer's have provided an invaluable descriptive resource to the archival community at large.

Pam Hackbart-Dean
Director, Special Collections Research Center
Southern Illinois University Carbondale

From a software developer's perspective, I am very happy with what the team at UIUC has accomplished with Archon. The way the software is structured welcomes, and in fact encourages new development from the community. It's very well-structured and easy to understand. I really hope they get to implement some of the new suggestions because it would make Archon a really powerful tool for our archives. The staff is already thrilled with the indexing capabilities it provides, and as a programmer I'm able to easily customize it to our needs and still have a clean, redistributable package that I can share with other Archon users.

The Archon archives management software allows archives to integrate past work spent describing collections, with traditional and emerging archival descriptive practices.  It is truly innovative software which, literally with the click of a button, delivers collections information to online users or translates its collection descriptions into transport and exchange formats such as EAD and MARC. Through robust import, storage and export functions, the Archon software minimizes many of the technical barriers that have complicated archival description and information-sharing.

While we are a new program, I feel very fortunate that we were able to begin cataloging our inventory with such a powerful archives management application.  Archon has taken a huge step in establishing and simplifying continuity and uniformity in archival description.
 
- Eddie Woodward, Florida State University Heritage Protocol Archivist