Meeting with HUL staff

Today I headed out to Harvard University Library (HUL) offices for the first day of the Technical Working Group meeting. The meeting didn’t start until 1pm; however, I had arranged to meet with a few HUL people regarding their digital library software infrastructure from 10am till noon.

I found out some interesting things:

• Each Harvard faculty has it’s own library or libraries, and HUL is responsible for services that involve bringing the information together and delivering it.
• HUL uses many off-the-shelf products to deliver their systems. I was surprised at the number of commercial products used. They also use many technologies that NLA use (Linux, Solaris, Oracle, Java).
• HUL is beginning to make some of their catalogue data available externally via OAI-PMH.
• They have a geospatial delivery system for maps.
• They have services that associate streaming audio files with finding aids, but they didn’t indicate they had any transcripts.
• They have the concept of an archival master and print master in their digital repository. The archival master is the only one treated as a preservation copy. They allow any file type to be uploaded as an archival master, with the caveat that they will not guarantee the ongoing accessibility of non-supported formats.
• They called their digital project the Library Digital Initiative (not the Digital Library Initiative) from the beginning, recognising that the physical and digital collections data should be one set of data.

They also indicated they would be interested in collaborating on the implementation of things. They generally seem to be at a similar stage to NLA with regard to digital repository things, and perhaps a little ahead/behind us in various aspects of digital delivery and management.

Lunch was provided following my meeting with HUL staff, and the TWG meeting commenced afterwards.