NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release:  Denver, Colorado  October 20, 2006

COLORADO ALLIANCE DIGITAL REPOSITORY PROJECT APPROVED

The Board of Directors of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries has approved initial funding for a consortium-wide digital repository project at its October 19, 2006 meeting.  The project will use the Fedora open source software which was selected after a long evaluation process by the Institutional Repository Implementation Team, chaired by John Culshaw from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The Alliance Digital Repository (ADR) project allows the participating member libraries to develop a shared technical and development infrastructure to store, preserve and disseminate a whole variety of digital objects including images, text, audio, video, learning objects, data sets or any other kind of material.  The project will make use of open source tools developed by others in order to fast track functionality.  As new software is developed as part of the project it will also be made available to the open source community.

The Fedora open source software was selected after extensive study, vendor demonstrations, speaking with colleagues in the field and due diligence.  It was selected because it best met library member needs, has excellent long-term prospects and is considered by many to be one of the best platforms for this kind of project.  Each library will have its own local branding and view of the system.  However, the development of a collaborative platform will allow libraries to save a substantial amount over each doing independent development.

The ADR project will bring two new staff into the consortium office, a project director and programmer.  In addition, the Alliance will provide substantial in kind support from existing staff.

The Alliance is also hoping to work with other consortia and libraries interested in digital repository development and is in discussion with other possible partners.

About the Alliance

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries is a non-profit consortium of eleven libraries in Colorado and Wyoming.  It is a 32 year old partnership of academic, special and public libraries with a history of working in concert to share resources through cooperative purchasing, special projects, systems management and consulting services.  Member Libraries include:  Auraria Library, Colorado College, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, Denver Public Library, Regis University, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado and the University of Wyoming.  http://www.coalliance.org

About Fedora

Fedora open source software gives organizations a flexible service-oriented architecture for managing and delivering their digital content. At its core is a powerful digital object model that supports multiple views of each digital object and the relationships among digital objects. Digital objects can encapsulate locally-managed content or make reference to remote content. Dynamic views are possible by associating web services with objects. Digital objects exist within a repository architecture that supports a variety of management functions. All functions of Fedora, both at the object and repository level, are exposed as web services. These functions can be protected with fine-grained access control policies.  http://fedora.info

For More  Information  Contact: