Rockefeller Archive Center

I have been in email correspondence with Sibyl Schaefer, Asst. Director, Head of Digital Programs at the Rockefeller Archive Center.  I had emailed her after finding the Rockefeller Archive Center on a list of Artefactual users, thinking they might be using AtoM.  However, Sibyl informed me that though they had been using Archivematica (another Artefactual product) for a time, they are making the switch to ArchivesSpace next month.  She said they had reviewed AtoM "several years ago and found the interface to be not very user-friendly".  She had said another reason they did not adopt AtoM was that at the time it was based much more on RAD than on DACS, though we have seen in our review of AtoM that they (AtoM) have updated that feature so that work can be based on DACS. 

When I replied to her and asked what the motivation was behind their switching to ArchivesSpace, she wrote this:

We're switching to ArchivesSpace from the Archivists' Toolkit, so it's a pretty straightforward migration path for us. I'm not sure if you were looking for a hosted solution or not, but both ArchivesSpace and AtoM are open source, so there's no cost for acquiring the program itself. We are ArchivesSpace members, which means that we do get a bit more response from the development team when we have an issue, but they seem to be fairly good at working with nonmembers as well. I think membership is a way of supporting the software and participating in its continued development as an open source option, rather than as a product being purchased.

I don't exactly know how she knows ArchivesSpace would be good at working with nonmembers since they are members, but perhaps it's something worth looking into, how much support and customization we would be able to get as nonmembers or lower-tiered members (if there is such a thing).