Library solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced a Charter Program to foster strategic collaboration between the company and its customers on the ongoing design of the Ex Libris Rosetta digital preservation system. Having gone live at the National Library of New Zealand in November 2008, Ex Libris Rosetta is now in general release.
The Ex Libris Rosetta Charter Program will allow members to share knowledge and collaborate with other preservation-focused institutions to advance preservation concepts and develop expertise. They will also seek to help define the solutions that will be created for, and incorporated, into Ex Libris Rosetta. Libraries participating in the programme will benefit from priority access to the digital preservation system.
Ex Libris Rosetta is expected to provide today's libraries with the infrastructure and technology needed to preserve and facilitate access to, and understanding of, the digital collections under their guardianship, in perpetuity. Built on a scalable, distributed architecture, the system can support multiple, flexible server configurations. Long-term sustainability is ensured by providing access to preserved digital entities via viewers that are compatible with constantly evolving format types, and are supplied as part of the system.
Following the Primo Charter Group model, the Ex Libris Rosetta Charter Program will span two years. During the period, the strategic, collaborative community will work together to further enhance the current digital preservation system functionality, including workflows and processes, for collecting, securing and preserving digital collections of all types. The group will consider ways to enhance the preservation-related services provided by the system, such as reference architectures, large data sets, rich media, e-mail/Wiki/blog archives, and migration of digital objects; and preservation issues specific to the consortia. Charter Program libraries will work in collaboration with Ex Libris to test and provide feedback on new functionalities before product versions are released to market.
