Repository Services - Q&A with Peter Murray

LYRASIS Repository Services was introduced at ALA in Chicago, and offers a cost-effective way to make your digital content readily available. Below is a Q&A with Peter Murray, Digital Technology Services Assistant Director, about the new service.  

How did the idea for Repository Services emerge?

We heard from members that there was a need for a flexible and reliable repository system that they could use to access digital content without the cost and time requirements to manage it locally. In part, it is a natural extension of the work that LYRASIS is already doing in the Digitization Collaborative and LYRASIS Digital in general. The LYRASIS Board of Trustees heard that feedback as part of our development of the LYRASIS Digital initiative, and directed staff to develop the service beginning in January of this year.

What does Repository Services offer?

LYRASIS Repository Services offers storage and preservation for your digital content ensuring short- and long- term access to your collections. We offer hosting, support and migration assistance, all on the Islandora platform. The Repository Services has three flavors: an individual repository for a single organization, group repository services, and a community repository service for organizations with less than 500 objects. The individual repository option is now live while the group and community repository options are in development now.

What is Islandora?

Islandora is an open source repository system based on Fedora Commons, Drupal and a host of additional open source applications. It is a very flexible system with functional plug-ins already built for managing and accessing digitized photos, newspapers, books, and audio and video content. The existing functionality corresponds with management and access needs of content digitized through the Digitization Collaborative, while also robust enough to manage all types and sizes of digital content collections. The software is scalable to manage small collections up through very large digital repositories. Islandora is best-of-breed open source software with strong, ongoing community support.

What are the preservation features?

The LYRASIS Repository Services leverage the capabilities of the underlying Fedora Commons software. One of the most powerful features is how Fedora tracks the original object, its metadata and associated derivatives in a standard METS-like package. This feature makes it simpler to migrate those objects to another system down the line. We will also enable the file checksum capabilities in Fedora and periodically check copies of the file against that checksum.

What level of support do you offer?

LYRASIS hosts the Islandora software for members and makes periodic updates to add functionality built by its open source community. We also contribute our own developments back to the open source community. LYRASIS migrates content from existing systems and/or from Digitization Collaborative projects into the repository. We also offer training and answer questions on the Repository Service.

What are the benefits of LYRASIS Repository Services over other repository options?

I think our use of the open source community really sets our service apart. We want to enable organizations to become part of the Islandora community as much as they are able and interested. When LYRASIS hosts the technology, organizations with limited technical capabilities can participate in the mailing lists and IslandoraCamp activities to influence the direction of the software they rely on. Organizations can find kindred spirits in the community for sharing techniques, publicity materials, and documentation.

How do you determine cost?

The yearly cost of the LYRASIS Repository Services is a combination of two factors. First is the cost of maintaining software and answering questions; we base this cost on the number of objects in the repository. The second factor is the amount of disk space used. It costs a lot more to host 10 video files than it does to host 10 PDF files, and this disk-usage-based cost component takes that into account. We've designed the service so that participants only pay for the storage they use with the flexibility to increase over time as needed.

Who should institutions contact for more information or to get started?

They can reach out to me, Peter Murray, and check out the Repository Services page on our website for more information.