NEWS RELEASE: Library of Congress & DuraCloud Launch Pilot Program Using Cloud Technologies to Test Perpetual Access to Digital Content

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 twitter@DuraSpace; @DuraCloud