ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 41 | October 1999
The NLA at work
Digital Services Project tender made public
As part of the Librarys Digital Services Project, a Request for Tender (RFT) for a digital collection management system was released on 23 August. The system will be used by the Library to store and manage its digital collections. These include both born digital material, such as web sites and electronic publications captured for long-term archiving, and digital versions of items from the Librarys collection or digital surrogates.
An increasing proportion of Australias documentary heritage is located only on the World Wide Web. These heritage materials may be lost irretrievably because of the rapid changes in technology, since the interfaces and file structures of the computers of the future will be quite different from those of today. Future Australians will be able to access their digital heritage only if it is archived and migrated to these new structures.
To this end, the Library has established the PANDORA archive of Australian electronic publications and this material and the Images 1 digital images from the Pictorial Collection are a priority for migration to the new system when it is in place.
An industry briefing on the RFT was held on 2 September at the Library. The session was well attended with over 35 members of industry represented. At the briefing, Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director-General Information Technology, explained that This project is a critical one for the National Library. It is the Librarys major IT applications project over the next year and is essential to support the Librarys role in collecting, managing and preserving digital information resources. The objectives and context for the project and a summary of the RFT documentation were presented at the briefing. An online demonstration of the Librarys work to date with PANDORA and Images 1 was also undertaken. Slides from the presentations and a summary of issues raised by industry at the briefing are available on the Librarys web site at: http://www.nla.gov.au/dsp/rft/briefing.html
Tenders close on Monday 18 October. For access to the RFT documentation and associated background information sees: http://www.nla.gov.au/dsp/rft
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au