Most Archivists are not UNIX programmers. Instead of forcing Archivists to learn UNIX, why not try to make the batch ingest process as simple as possible? That's exactly what we have done at UNC Charlotte. Archivists are presented two drives from the AWS Storage Gateway: a "work" drive for preparing objects and a "ready" drive for ingesting objects. As files as saved to the "work" drive, they are instantly whisked from campus and backed up to the cloud; this is known as a hybrid cloud strategy. When ready to ingest, Archivists simply make a directory on the "ready" drive using the format "namespace-type-parent_pid" then drag-and-drop their objects and metadata into the folder. Ingest readiness is signaled to the system by Archivists creating a special text file into the directory and the system takes it from there! Behind the scenes, the files are pulled from S3 to the Islandora server for batch ingest. Long winded ingests communicate their progress to Archivists via hourly e-mail. And much, much more!
