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Ex Libris Digital Preservation system

Today I attended a webinar from Sun Microsystems about the new Ex Libris Digital Preservation system. You can view the webinar here.

The talking points are they handle all the hardware and they can handle the software. They claim it’s secure and built with redundancy. The major problem is that they say you can’t provide access to the files without getting Primo (Ex Libris’s new Amazon-like catalog toy-which is looking fun). They won’t convert the files for you when the formats out of style, but they make it so that you can maintain and upgrade the files.

All and all, I like the idea of a comprehensive digital preservation system being handled by people who know hardware. I Just think it is going to be too expensive for most libraries. Time will tell how many libraries pick this up.
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Carl Grant said…
Joy: As one of the presenters at the webinar yesterday, please allow me to clarify a few things you said in your post:

1. While SUN is an Ex Libris partner and did sponsor the webinar, the product is purely Ex Libris developed, sold, installed, maintained. Sun’s involvement would be IF the customer wanted to run on their hardware, which of course, is an excellent choice, but is also NOT a necessity. The software can run on numerous hardware platforms, so the customer does have the option to explore other hardware platforms.

2. We provide interfaces to access tools, we just don’t bundle one in DPS. So the system is really a lot more than just a place to park files. We mentioned that we supported standards like Z39.50/SRU/SRW -- all standards that support standardized search interfaces and thus permit you to use a wide variety of access tools. Of course, PRIMO would be an excellent choice as well, although I’m unclear what you mean by Amazon like “toy”? (Perhaps you meant “tool”?).

3. With regard to converting and/or migrating files, you might have missed the part where we briefly mentioned that as part of our Charter Customer Program, we’re looking for partners to help us further develop the basic tools that Yaniv described in the Q&A section (which might be what you’re referring to when you said “make is so that you can”). Migrating files will be a continuing process for the life of preservation systems and, in many ways, is just at the starting line, so what we’ve built is a system that will make it possible to plug that functionality in as it is developed and made available.

4. As for the cost of the system, we’d encourage organizations to contact us for a price quote. We think you might be pleasantly surprised. Especially when one considers the investment that could be lost if a preservation solution isn’t put into place!
November 7, 2008 at 1:52 PM
Joy said…
Carl,

Thank you for clarifying those points. I admit that I did not get to stick around to attend the question and answer section of the webinar.

Just to clarify, what I meant by "toy" was that Primo was looking fun compared to other catalogs. I have edited the post to refelect that.
November 7, 2008 at 5:49 PM
Joy said…
cg's full name and affiliation:

Carl Grant
President
Ex Libris North America
November 7, 2008 at 5:50 PM
dwallen said…
i was under the impression that the DPS would be made up of three parts -- the base component would be digitool -- then there were two other parts befoer you get a full blown DPS -- this way there is a path for going to a full DPS system
November 8, 2008 at 6:10 PM
Joy said…
I believe there was a few levels of service you could get. You can take a look at the presentation linked from the main post to check for sure. I think the presentation also had contact information for service representatives so you could ask them directly.
February 9, 2009 at 11:18 AM
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