FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 15, 2009
Contact: Michele Kimpton, CBO, DuraSpace
Library of Congress and DuraCloud Launch Pilot Program Using Cloud
Technologies to Test Perpetual Access to Digital ContentLibrary of
Congress and DuraCloud Launch Pilot Program Using Cloud Technologies
to Test Perpetual Access to Digital Content
Service is Part of National Digital Information Infrastructure and
Preservation Program
Washington, DC, Ithaca, NY, Boston, MA How long is long enough for our
collective national digital heritage to be available and accessible?
The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure
and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and DuraSpace have announced that
they will launch a one-year pilot program to test the use of cloud
technologies to enable perpetual access to digital content. The pilot
will focus on a new cloud-based service, DuraCloud, developed and
hosted by the DuraSpace organization. Among the NDIIPP partners
participating in the DuraCloud pilot program are the New York Public
Library and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Cloud technologies use remote computers to provide local services
through the Internet. Duracloud will let an institution provide data
storage and access without having to maintain its own dedicated
technical infrastructure.
For NDIIPP partners, it is not enough to preserve digital materials
without also having strategies in place to make that content
accessible. NDIIPP is concerned with many types of digital content,
including geospatial, audiovisual, images and text. The NDIIPP
partners will focus on deploying access-oriented services that make it
easier to share important cultural, historical and scientific
materials with the world. To ensure perpetual access, valuable digital
materials must be stored in a durable manner. DuraCloud will provide
both storage and access services, including content replication and
monitoring services that span multiple cloud-storage providers.
Martha Anderson, director of NDIIPP Program Management said “Broad
online public access to significant scientific and cultural
collections depends on providing the communities who are responsible
for curating these materials with affordable access to preservation
services. The NDIIPP DuraCloud pilot project with the DuraSpace
organization is an opportunity to demonstrate affordable preservation
and access solutions for communities of users who need this kind of
help.”
The New York Public Library offers a set of scholarly research
collections with an intellectual and cultural range that is both
global and local. The DuraCloud pilot program at the library will
replicate large collections of digital images from a Fedora repository
into DuraCloud. The New York Public Library plans to convert the
images from the TIFF format to JPEG 2000 and to serve these images
using a powerful JPEG 2000 image engine within DuraCloud.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library provides access to historical
journal literature in biodiversity in collaboration with global
partners, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Missouri
Botanical Gardens and the Woods Hole Marine Biology Lab. Their
DuraCloud pilot will focus on replication of digital content to
provide protection for valuable biodiversity resources. The pilot will
demonstrate bi-directional replication of content among partners in
the United States and Europe. The library will use the cloud-computing
capabilities offered by DuraCloud to analyze biodiversity texts to
extract key information such as species-related words. The institution
will also deploy a JPEG2000 image engine via DuraCloud to process and
serve digital images.
DuraCloud is a cloud-based service developed and hosted by the
nonprofit organization DuraSpace. DuraCloud was developed with support
from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation. The DuraCloud pilot program is being launched with support
from NDIIPP. DuraCloud is aimed at helping institutions and
individuals take advantage of cloud technologies in providing access
to their digital materials. DuraCloud is focused on providing trusted
solutions for organizations such as universities, libraries, cultural
heritage organizations, research centers, and others who are concerned
with ensuring perpetual access to their digital content.
DuraSpace provides leadership and innovation in open-source
technologies for global communities who manage, preserve and provide
access to digital content. DuraSpace was established by merging Fedora
Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of
open-source repository software worldwide. DuraSpace serves more than
750 institutions that are committed to the use of open-source software
solutions for the dissemination and preservation of academic,
scientific, and cultural digital assets.
The mission of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and
Preservation Program is to develop a national strategy to collect,
preserve and make available digital content, especially materials that
are created only in digital formats, for current and future generations.
Related story: "Library of Congress test drives cloud storage" by Dave
Rosenberg: http://bit.ly/fSCQV
Library of Congress: http://bit.ly/1NQsqF
Hatcheck blog: http://bit.ly/SWjSt
Follow on twit...@duraspace; @DuraCloud
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