DIGITAL COLLECTIONS AND INFORMATICS/NATIONAL RESEARCH COLLECTIONS AUSTRALIA

Simon Checksfield | Digital Collections and Informatics

11 May 2016

NRCA

Digitisation

NRCA

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National Research Collections Australia (NRCA)

Formed 24 months ago

6 Major CollectionsANACCANFCANHANICANWCATSC

3 National Collections

15-20 Million Specimens Plus

Activities are ranged and varied from research to commercial, and now formally includes Digitisation.

NRCA Digitisation | Simon Checksfield

Strategy

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Strategy

Goals Better Data Management, Legacy Backlog, Born Digital,Digitisation Hub

Impacts Secure the Collections, Support Research, Discoverability and Visibility, Digitisation Innovation, Education and Outreach, Alignment and Leadership

Priorities Collections by collection with overall NRCA strategy guidance

Tools / Partnerships

CMS, Digital Assets, DAM, Informatics and Compute, ALA

Roadmap CMS, Deliver via Operational Plans and Projects, Pilot First, Reviews

NRCA Digitisation | Simon Checksfield

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Roadmap

Complete Pilot of new Collections Management System (part of better data management).

Now Finalising Internal Draft. Business Case for implementation of the new CMS.

By End June Endorsement by CSIRO Executive and then public circulation.

2016-2017 Business Case and Operational Plans

Systems

Architecture

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A new Collections Management System

A new approach to systems architecture

• A move from bespoke collection specific systems to a coordinated centralised web based system

• So needs to be connected, distributed and flexible.

It needs to leveraging existing IT assets

• The Data Access Portal (DAP) – A enterprise quality DAM / MAM tool written by CSIRO to handle large collections of research Data

• The ALA – an internationally recognised state of the art aggregation and visualisation tool for (in our case) specimen information (and more).

Architecture is a simplistic view of a complex space. It is a NRCA centric view and is not necessarily operationally supported by ALA.

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Data Access PortalDigital Asset Management

Collections Management System

• Specimen Data• Research Activity / Data• External Data Sources

• Public• Data Consumers

Data

Digital Assets

Providers

Consumers

Data+

Links

DAM Links via ALA

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System Communication and Data Storage

Each Arrow represents a complex communication channel

Of particular interest is the communication path between the CMS and ALA.

• Real time updates of specimen data?• Links to other data sources• Access to digital assets

Separation of metadata and digital assets

Historically in CSIRO / NRCA has not done this well. The new architecture changes this.

NRCA/Digital Collections and InformaticsSimon ChecksfieldManager

t +61 2 6246 4314

e simon.checksfield@csiro.au

w www.csiro.au/research/collections

NRCA/NFC

Thank you

and

Discussion