NLS Picks GlassHouse

LONDON -- GlassHouse Technologies, the industrys leading independent consulting firm with proven experience transforming IT infrastructure, today announced that it had been selected by The National Library of Scotland (NLS) to provide consultancy in the design and implementation of a new storage infrastructure as part of a project to build its digital library. The Digital NLS initiative involves making the Library’s collections available online by digitising its archives, collecting born-digital publications and preserving this irreplaceable collection in perpetuity.

The National Library of Scotland, established in 1925, holds copies of every publication published in the United Kingdom, from medieval tomes to the Harry Potter series. GlassHouse is providing consultancy to NLS on the storage issues related to the digitisation of its archives to improve public access, support a large number of online visitors and make its entire collection available across the Internet.

To enable this digital library transformation, a new storage infrastructure is required to handle the thousands of traditional paper publications stored within its archives, as well as the newer rich media data now also collected. The project is estimated to generate approximately 100TB (terabytes) of data, which also needs to be stored securely and accommodate the new publications being added daily.

GlassHouse initially worked with NLS to develop a business case as part of their bid to secure project funding from the Scottish Executive. Once funding was secured, GlassHouse worked with the Library’s curators and ICT division to understand the requirements for the new storage solution. This was then fed into a Reference Architecture, from which a vendor tender document was generated. The goal was to define and procure, through a thorough tender document process, the most effective solution for the greatest possible storage capacity delivering the most cost-effective value.

David Dinham, ICT Manager, NLS said, “Storing the National Library of Scotland’s collections electronically will both protect the collections against disaster and improve the public’s access to rare and valuable documents. Until now, public access to some ancient documents in a fragile condition has been restricted in order to conserve them. By storing these documents electronically, they will be easily accessible by many more people. This project is an important stage in improving the Library’s services to meet the needs of the future. GlassHouse’s support in securing funding and defining the right set of capabilities we need has been invaluable and brought our storage project in on time to budget with minimum risk and impact to the Library’s resources.”

GlassHouse Technologies Inc.