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Information
Technology Issues
The
delivery of the Library’s services is being rapidly transformed
by changes in the technology environment, and in particular
by the maturing of the World Wide Web as a universal mechanism
for information delivery.
The
Council approved an Information
Technology Plan for the period 2002–04. This plan identifies
more than 60 projects to be undertaken over the three-year
period, and provides indicative costs for these projects.
The
Library aims to contain the costs of its information technology
projects by a number of means, including competitive procurement
procedures, continuous improvement, market testing of IT infrastructure,
benchmarking of specific activities, and use of open-source
software where appropriate. The Library has developed a plan
to benchmark the cost of supporting its desktop computer environment,
and of providing technical support for selected business systems.
Depending on the outcomes of these benchmarking projects,
the Library will consider the need to market test selected
segments of its information technology infrastructure.
The
Library’s web site
The
Library’s
web site allows users to gain detailed information about
the
collections, to browse or view portions of the collections,
to experience exhibitions,
and to gain a good understanding of the Library’s
policies, strategies and activities.
The Library is currently developing a strategy to further
improve the ease of use of the web site.
In
accordance with Government requirements, the Library has an
Online Action Plan (www.nla.gov.au/policy/oplan/index.html),
a Privacy
Statement, an Accessibility
Statement and a Metadata
Strategy pertaining to its web site.

Digital
Services Project
The
Digital Services Project (www.nla.gov.au/dsp/)
is a major undertaking to implement a scaleable infrastructure
and management framework to support the Library’s growing
digital collection. Several components of this infrastructure
were implemented this year:
- The
Digital Object Storage System—is used to store the Library’s
digitised publications, maps, manuscripts, sheet music,
pictorial images and oral history audio files. By the end
of the year over two terabytes of digital collection material
were being stored in the system.
- The
Digital Archiving System—supports the collection and management
of Australian web sites and electronic publications. Several
State libraries, and ScreenSound Australia, are also using
this system to contribute to the Library’s collection of
electronic publications.
- The
Digital Collections Manager System—supports the digitisation
of pictures, maps, manuscripts and sheet music, and allows
digitised images to be uploaded to the Digital Object Storage
System.
- The
Online Resolver Service—accepts Web requests which refer
to a digital collection item by its persistent identifier,
and redirects them to the current storage location of that
item. These identifiers can be used in citations, knowing
they will persist long into the future irrespective of changes
to the delivery mechanisms.
During
the year the Library continued to develop and enhance its
online delivery systems for digitised pictorial, map, manuscript,
sheet music and audio collections.
IT
infrastructure improvements
The
Library improved the performance and security of its IT infrastructure
by:
- upgrading
the desktop computers used by staff and readers
- upgrading
the voice infrastructure
- upgrading
the speed and redundancy of links to the Internet, and
- making
a major improvement to data storage facilities through the
introduction of a Storage Area Network and Digital Object
Storage System
Service
availability
The
average availability during the year of 10 key service areas
exceeded the Library’s target of 99.5 per cent for those areas.
| Service |
Availability
(%)
|
| Local
Area Network |
99.75
|
| File
Services (Microsoft NT Servers) |
99.69
|
| Email
(Microsoft Exchange) |
99.82
|
| Web
Services |
99.55
|
| Integrated
Library Management System |
99.93
|
| PANDORA |
99.98
|
| Finance
One |
100.00
|
| Kinetica
Document Delivery |
99.73
|
| Kinetica
Searches |
99.63
|
| PictureAustralia |
99.94
|
|