Page 29 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 2

To choose an architecture, the planning group must create a list of
requirements. A list of requirements must be exactly that—a list that
describes what you minimally need for the system to be usable. The list
should be as short as possible, with highly desired functionality stored
elsewhere. The most effective way to create this list is to directly involve staff
and users in defining requirements, identifying questions to ask vendors,
and system selection. The key to improving outcomes is to ensure that key
stakeholders take ownership of the project.

Who Are the Users and What Do They Need?
The users and their needs define the scope of your project and what you
need in terms of financial, staff, and technical resources. For this reason,
the most important question to answer before choosing an architecture is
what need the repository serves.
The answer to this question defines requirements such as:

• Who are the users?
• What is in the repository?
• How will users interact with the repository?
• How will objects be added, retrieved, and maintained?
• Metadata and vocabulary support?
• What access and rights management are needed?
• Will integration with other systems be required?
• What is the system’s capacity?
• Will preservation capabilities be needed?
• How are objects removed?
• What happens to the repository and its contents when it is
no longer needed or supported?
• How will funding for the repository be maintained?
Best practices and standards such as OAIS inform the requirements-building
process, but these things are tools that have the ultimate purpose of sup-
porting user needs. For this reason, it’s essential to work closely with users
to understand their objectives, the materials they need, and their workflows.
For example, if the current workflow for image-processing staff is to use
specific software for processing, adding metadata to, and managing images,
the best repository workflow may be for them to continue to add metadata
as they have been doing. These staff may be unwilling to change how they
accomplish this specific task, since their existing workflow may be more
efficient or integrate more seamlessly with other processes.
More broadly, fundamentally different needs require fundamentally
different solutions. Communities that need to publish data and research
require a very different system and must support different workflows than
faculty requiring support for online educational resources, or staff needing

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