Report: “Inside the National Library of Australia’s Make-or-Break Digital Transformation”

From  iTnews:

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems had provided a stopgap measure but they were, according to NLA development branch director Kavinga Hubert, “rudimentary in nature, had very limited capacity and functionality, and were no longer able to support Library’s future requirements”.
A working group convened and recognised the business risks posed by the systems’ inability to scale, process inefficiency, and “unsustainable” maintenance requirements. The six-year DLIR [Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement]  emerged as a broad initiative to modernise the library’s systems and facilitate new collaborative approaches.
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Since it went live in June, the project has exceeded financial and performance expectations, driving a dramatically faster workflow that means a 200-page book can be digitised 80 percent faster than in the past. By November, the library had digitised 1.53 million book and journal pages – up from just 15,000 three years ago.
The digital deposit service (DDS) particularly has proven to be an invaluable efficiency tool, allowing donors to upload digital objects for analysis, indexing, archiving, and delivery to the public. This workflow used to take weeks, but within the new framework a new object can be processed within a single day.

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Filed under: Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Libraries, National Libraries, News