What Hundreds of Migrations Have Taught Us
Migrating Your Digital Collections: A Few Things We've Learned
At Discovery Garden, we've supported hundreds of digital collections migrations over the years, from small institutional archives to large, complex multi-format repositories. That experience has taught us that no migration is ever entirely straightforward, and even modest collections can run into unexpected complications when the planning hasn't gone deep enough. Here are a few principles we return to every time.
Give yourself more time than you think you need
Migrations almost always take longer than anticipated. Scoping surprises, metadata inconsistencies, access issues: any one of these can add days or weeks to a timeline. Our own process involves assessing the complexity of each migration on its own merits before we commit to a schedule, rather than applying a generic estimate. We've found it's better to set a conservative timeline with your internal stakeholders and come in ahead of schedule than to over-promise and scramble.
If parts of your collection are in high demand, like materials that need to remain accessible to researchers or the public, consider keeping them live in your current system right up until you're ready to launch them in the new one. Conversely, if your old system is no longer viable but site users need immediate access to certain collections, consider what it might take to launch your site with migration work still in progress.
Know exactly what you're moving, and confirm you can actually get to it
Before any migration begins, you want a clear picture of what's in scope: which collections, which formats, which files. More importantly, you need to confirm that you actually have reliable access to all of it. Source files have a way of not being where you expect them. They might be located on older servers, in shared drives with inconsistent permissions, or in formats that need conversion before they can be ingested.
Auditing your source locations early, checking that they're stable, backed up, and fully accessible, is one of the highest-value things you can do at the start of a project. Finding out mid-migration that a segment of your collection lives on a server that hasn't been maintained is the kind of thing that turns a manageable delay into a real problem.
Prepare your team for the system they're moving into, not just the one they're leaving
It sounds obvious, but it's easy to spend so much energy on the migration itself that you underinvest in readiness for the new environment. Your new repository may handle ingest differently, set access restrictions differently, or require different workflows for batch edits and metadata management.
We build training into both the early and later stages of our migrations for exactly this reason, not just a one-time handoff at the end, but genuine familiarity that develops as the project progresses. We’ve found this helps everyone hit the ground running once the migration is complete. Even before migration projects begin, we try to surface pain points around platform differences so we can better anticipate and troubleshoot potential issues.
Migrations are complex, and the stakes are high: these are irreplaceable collections. We've been doing this long enough to have seen most of what can go wrong, and we bring that experience to every project. If you're planning a migration and want to think it through, we're always happy to talk.
Ready to see what Islandora can do for your organization?
Whether you're managing a single repository or supporting a multi-institution consortium, Islandora offers the flexibility, scalability, and support you need. Contact Discovery Garden to schedule a demo, start a project discovery session, or learn more about how we can help you build a future-proof digital repository.
Interior of a Library, Daniel Marot the Elder. Published by Pierre Husson, 1703/1712. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection.
