Max Eckard

I'm Max Eckard, Associate Director for Curation at the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library .

Table of Contents

• About
• Portfolio
  • Essays (Blog Posts) and Talks
  • Books
  • Peer-Reviewed Articles
  • Computer Programs
  • Curriculum Vitae (CV)
• Contact Information

About

As head of the Bentley's Curation team, I represent the team on the Bentley Leadership Team and lead the Bentley's holistic approach to curating archives of all genres and formats.

I provide leadership and supervision for those who oversee the processing and collections management programs (including conservation), digitization program, born-digital curation activities, web and social media archives, and associated infrastructure at the Bentley. In this role, I provide strategic vision for the development, maintenance, and integration of our technical ecosystem, which includes Aeon, ArchivesSpace, Archivematica, Archive-It, DSpace, and other platforms. To achieve these goals, I serve as the Bentley's primary liaison to the U-M Library Library Information Technology group, to establish clear and consistent communications and advance the creation and enhancement of digital collections. I also work closely with our team to support the processing of complex collections, the creation and reuse of metadata, and the introduction of more efficient workflows through technical innovation.

Portfolio

Essays (Blog Posts) and Talks

Link to Essays (Blog Posts) and Talks .

Books

Making Your Tools Work for You: Building and Maintaining an Integrated Technical Ecosystem for Archives and Digital Libraries

Take a peak inside Making Your Tools Work for You !

Archivists make use of many different tools and systems in their day-to-day work, all of which cover a wide range of functions in the big, bold (and, of course, sometimes difficult!) archival enterprise: research request and workflow management, archival information management, digital preservation, web archiving, digital repositories, and more. These tools necessarily specialize in one function or another, but none of them do it all, and managing so many resources can become overwhelming. The good news--at least when it comes to technology--is that... many systems are designed to connect with one another, and systems integration can support a variety of archival needs, creating efficient workflows from accession to ingest to access. Weaving together both theory and reflective practice, Making Your Tools Work for You gives an overview of the what, why, and how of systems integration for archives and digital libraries. Using examples from his work at the Bentley Historical Library as well as others' work in the field, Max Eckard outlines: how to design an integrated technical ecosystem; how to select systems capable of "playing nicely" with others; various integration methodologies to get systems talking to one another; tips for starting a systems integration project; and ways to clean, reconcile, program, and ultimately support data and metadata on the move. Whether designing integration from the ground up or taking steps to improve upon current systems, Making Your Tools Work for You is a comprehensive manual that will help readers adapt and apply these ideas to set up archives and digital libraries for success.

And it's been reviewed...

• Memory, Lindsey. "Review of Making Your Tools Work for You: Building and Review of Making Your Tools Work for You: Building and Maintaining an Integrated Technical Ecosystem for Digital Archives and Libraries ," Journal of Western Archives 13, no. 1 (2022)
• Leimkuehler, Ryan. "Review of Making Your Tools Work for You: Building and Review of Making Your Tools Work for You: Building and Maintaining an Integrated Technical Ecosystem for Digital Archives and Libraries ," Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 10 (2023)
• Howard, Rachel I. "Making Your Tools Work for You: Building and Maintaining an Integrated Technical Ecosystem for Digital Archives and Libraries. By Max Eckard. [Review] ," Archival Issues 42, no. 1 (2023)

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• Eckard, Max, Elizabeth Gadelha, and Mike Shallcross. "Level Up! Lessons Learned from Six Years of Collaborative Technical Skills Development ," American Archivist 85, no. 2 (2022): 402-442.
• Eckard, Max and Dallas Pillen. "The Impact of the Shift to Cloud Computing on Digital Recordkeeping Practices at the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library ," Archival Science (2022).
• Eckard, Max and Dallas Pillen. "Streamlining Digital Archival Workflows at the Bentley Historical Library ," Journal of Digital Media Management 6, no. 1 (2017): 65-77.
• Beaubien, Sarah and Max Eckard. "Addressing Faculty Publishing Concerns with Open Access Journal Quality Indicators ," Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 2, no. 2 (2014).
• Eckard, Max, Ashley Rosener, and Lindy Scripps-Hoekstra. "Factors that Increase the Probability of a Successful Academic Library Job Search ," The Journal of Academic Librarianship 40, no. 2 (2014): 1047-115.

Computer Programs

• DAPPr : DSpace API Python Programming resource (DAPPr) is a Python client to communicate with a remote DSpace installation using its backend Application Programming Interface (API).
• BAroQUe (with Dallas Pillen, Hyeeyoung Kim, Liz Gadelha, Maryse Lundering-Timpano, Matt Adair, Melissa Hernández-Durán and Tim Baron): The Bentley Audiovisual Quality control Utility (BAroQUe) is a Python 3-based Command Line Interface (CLI) executable primarily intended for in-house use. It performs Quality Control (QC)--with microservices to validate directory and file naming structure, METS XML and WAV BEXT chunks--for audio digitized by vendors according to Bentley specifications.
• AVATAR : The Bentley A/V dAtabase To ARchivesspace (AVATAR) creates or updates ArchivesSpace collection-level and archival as well as digital object elements using data output from the A/V Database.
• Encoding Reparative Description (with Ella Li, Gideon Goodrich, and Jesse Johnston): This repository contains code related to the "Encoding Reparative Description" project, which began in 2023 with a team of researchers at the University of Michigan School of Information, the Bentley Historical Library, and the University of Michigan's Humanities Collaboratory.

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Link to Curriculum Vitae (CV) .

Contact Information

P.S. I am also really into karate. And a few times I have given sermons. And once I did a Moth StorySLAM.