Dear all,

I’ve been asked to look into Ex Libris’ Rosetta.  Our ICT manager has got very excited about the fact that it advertises itself as a digital asset management system as well as a digital preservation system so I thought I’d see if there is anyone out there using it whose organisation is similar to ours and who is using it to do the same sort of thing. 

We’re the archive & local studies services for Somerset and Devon, formerly run by the local authorities as county record offices but now independent.  We are also joint with the Somerset Historic Environment Service and the Somerset Museums Service, under the umbrella charity called the South West Heritage Trust.   

We are in the pretty standard position of have some born-digital records already, but lacking a digital preservation system to properly take care of them.  At the moment, we are using a DIY approach using free tools, but this is no longer sustainable.  I have already been looking into Archivematica and Preservica, and have heard of Roda but get the impression that it doesn’t have many (if any) English-speaking customers.  We don’t have an in-house ICT team (our ICT manager is it!), and nobody here has any technical expertise in digital preservation or digital asset management, so we'd need something fairly out-of-the-box.

As well as needing a system to properly manage our born-digital records, we have a growing need to properly manage our ever-increasing quantity of digital images.  Our Museums Service design team, in particular, have been photographing as many of the museum objects as they can get their hands on, and we have a large number of digitised glass plate negatives, etc.  We need to make sure that these sorts of images are catalogued, that user copies can be made available as appropriate, etc.  I think that our ICT manager hopes that Rosetta could help to take care of this side of things, as well as being a useful way to manage born-digital archives.  (Obviously, software is only a part of the solution in matters like these, but it nonetheless does need looking into.) 

I get the impression, rightly or wrongly, that Rosetta is mainly being used by academic libraries.  If there is anyone out there who is using it and is more like us, I’d be delighted to hear from you. 

Thank you,

Jane

Jane de Gruchy

Archivist

Somerset Archives and Local Studies