Wellcome Trust’s large-scale digitisation programme picks Tessella’s SDB to manage digital assets

Oxford, UK | 10 May 2011. Tessella, the international provider of science powered technology and consulting services is pleased to announce that it has been selected by the Wellcome Trust to deliver a Digital Asset Management (DAM) using Tessella’s Safety Deposit Box (SDB), to provide an essential component system of the developing Wellcome Digital Library.

Robert Kiley, Head of Digital Services at the Wellcome Library said: “As the Library was already using SDB to manage its born-digital collections it made sense to work with Tessella to see if SDB could be developed further so that it could also manage the assets we will create through our large-scale digitisation programme. Based on a feasibility study, coupled with an in-depth requirements specification undertaken with Tessella, we are confident that SDB4 will provide the Wellcome Library with a single repository solution for all the Library’s digital assets, both digitised and born-digital.”

The Trust’s current DAM system is version 3 of Tessella’s SDB. The Trust will upgrade this to SDB version 4 (SDB4). SDB4 is expected to preserve the Trust’s digital material for the long term.

Jon Tilbury, Director at Tessella, said: “The Wellcome Library is trusted with research records that are of global significance. We are very proud that Wellcome has selected to continue working with Tessella to deliver the system that will safeguard such precious digital assets.”

Additionally SDB4 will be extended by Tessella to enable the ingest and storage of all the Trust’s digital material (both born-digital and digitised) and to disseminate it on request from the Trust’s delivery system (DDS). The required software extensions were specified during a comprehensive User Requirements phase where Tessella worked in close cooperation with Library staff to identify their needs, for the DAM and that helped clarify the requirements for other component systems that will be needed by the Wellcome Digital Library.

The delivery of the Trust’s digital material is handled by three components: A Workflow Tracking System, WTS, that ensures that digital content destined for the Wellcome Digital Library is created, quality controlled and made available for ingest into the SDB4 based DAM that stores all the digital files. Additionally a delivery system (DDS), will be procured to provide a cache (for storing frequently and/or recently requested material) and can deliver lower resolution presentation copies of material on-demand to improve download speeds for users where low (broadband) network bandwidths may be a problem.

SDB4 must provide the Trust with the same or similar functionality as that in use previously within the Trust’s implementation of the SDB3 Digital Preservation System, as well as providing the additional functionality that the Trust requires for the DAM to function within the Wellcome Digital Library.

This version is a substantial upgrade to the version used for the born-digital system. As well as new pieces of functionality, the main “architectural” difference includes its increased ease and flexibility of the system to add new workflows or adapt existing workflows for each customers needs.

SDB4 will be implemented as two collections within a single tenant instance and should not employ the use of different tenants. Porting the born-digital system to the upgraded system will be straightforward since it has few bespoke configurations and still runs on the same combination of technologies (Tomcat java web server). The Trust was keen to migrate the database technology to their internally supported platforms, so SDB4 can now also be deployed to the MS SQL Server 2008 database system.

In addition, as part of this upgrade, Tessella will deploy the latest version of the Technical Registry (SDB Registry, was named PCR previously but has now been integrated into the SDB4 family of web applications). This will be deployed with a newly populated database.

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Notes to the editor

About Digital Archiving at Tessella

Tessella are world leaders in the provision of Digital Archiving technologies, working with major governments in 7 countries across 3 continents. Tessella’s Digital Archiving offerings cover software, consulting, research and support and place us at the cutting edge of this emerging discipline. Our core technology, SDB, is now in its fourth generation and provides stable professionally supported platform with the flexibility to deliver individual customer needs.

For further information visit our dedicated microsite on http://www.digital-preservation.com/

About Tessella

Founded in 1980, Tessella is the international provider of science powered technology and consulting services. World leading organizations choose our unique blend of science, engineering and sector expertise to deliver innovative and cost-effective solutions to complex real-world commercial and technical challenges. Our people are high achievers from leading universities and are passionate about delivering value to clients.

About the Wellcome Library

The Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation, is dedicated to improving human and animal health. It supports the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. The Trust’s breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. It is independent of both political and commercial interests.

The Wellcome Library is based on the collections created by the Trust’s founder, Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936). The Wellcome Library holds books, manuscripts, archives, films and pictures on the history of medicine from the earliest times to the present day. In August 2010 the Wellcome Library launched a £3.9m project to digitize its collections and make them available to a worldwide audience, providing a global resource for the study of the history of medicine and modern bioscience.

Media Contacts
Tessella
Christina Tealdi | Public and Analyst Relations Executive
Phone: +44 (0) 1235 555511 | Mobile: + 44 (0) 779 9346453
christina.tealdi(@tessella.com

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