Abstract

We evaluated three free software applications for administrative archives management and their implementation in university archives. Software evaluated was: Archon, Archivists ’ toolkit and ICA-AtoM. The comparative analysis considered 12 requirements concerning metadata management, description standards and lending, and document life-cycle analysis. The results show the requirements met by each software application evaluated. Although currently they do not satisfy all archive management requirements, open software can be customized and integrated with new contexts.