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.
Library Digital Stuff