Academic and research institutions are digitizing, preserving and distributing vast amounts of electronic content at an enormous rate today -- from video, photos and animation, to research papers and visualization of scientific models. Like many universities, Penn State is striving to ensure that these immense electronic collections and storage repositories are easily accessible to users and will continue to be available to future generations.
"Digital library platforms will change, but our first priority will always be to provide students and faculty with access to the information they need," said Saussure. "Needs such as these, in addition to the needs of faculty, staff, and our research partners at other institutions all need to be taken into account. With all these interrelated roles, being able to find information now, and long into the future, is just as important as how we store it."
Saussure and his team have recently been collaborating with HP to test digital tools that can be used across all of Penn State's many repository platforms. Primary among these tools is eXtensible Access Method (XAM), a new interface standard created by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) that is expected to help the University cohesively manage and provide access to its diverse digital library collections, electronic record archives, e-science and e-research data repositories.
"We're talking about hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of information from many sources,” said Saussure. XAM is the digital glue that brings all these data repositories together.
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