LC21 A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress (2000) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
8. Information Technology Infrastructure
8. Information Technology Infrastructure
Pages 193-213
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 193... ...
provides and uses information technology today and offers guidance for the future. Although the chapter occasionally makes specific observations about the organization, it is not a traditional review of information technology within an organization as it might be performed by a management consulting team.
|
From page 194... ...
ITS produces substantial and serviceable high-level architectural documents on topics such as storage and retrieval of digital content, centrally supported systems infrastructure, and telecommunications.) Its server and storage architectures meet its customers' needs.
|
From page 195... ...
195 _ C,0 ~ ° Co cn ~ ~ CD _ ~ ~ o ~ oo c ~ CO _ o ~ cn U' S ..
|
From page 196... ...
. Similarly, the Copyright Office has contracted with a third party to build the CORDS system, and the Human Resources Services Directorate is using PeopleSoft software.
|
From page 197... ...
For example, copyright registration is not completely unrelated to other registration processes those for property deeds, cars, patents, and so on so it should not be assumed that because the Copyright Office is a unique institution, it must necessarily need custom software. The Library gained experience with out-sourcing in two large projects: the apparently successful ILS (see below for a discussion)
|
From page 198... ...
This system replaces a suite of inhouse mainframe applications developed by LC over the last 30 years. The ILS database has 12 million bibliographic entries, nearly 5 million authority records, over 12 million holdings records, approximately 26,000 patron records, over 30,000 vendor records, and more than 60,000 order records.
|
From page 199... ...
Its integration provides inventory control that can help improve physical security, an ongoing issue at the Library, and Mat substantially reduces the number of steps necessary to track down a copy of a book requested by a Congressperson. By integrating a number of functions under one project, ILS can realize the kinds of synergies and savings that could be realized on an even larger scale if lets or an organization involving ITS were tasked with reviewing and monitoring systems and infrastructure development across the Library.
|
From page 200... ...
The Information Technology Services Directorate As a Service Organization Organizational units served by ITS express frustration about the difficulty of getting staff time and other resources from ITS, although they generally understand the difficulties of serving a variety of organizational units, each with its own priorities, from a single pool of people and budget. The committee believes this frustration comes from two basic flaws in We ITS Directorate: ITS does not act like a service organization, and its services are free.
|
From page 201... ...
That is, individual units should be able to contract for services outside or perform them within their own units or agree with other units of LC on joint ventures or contract with ITS.3 In return, the information technology vision, strategy, research, and planning (ITVSRP) group discussed in Chapter 7 and, ultimately, the new deputy librarian should sit in judgment on cases where allowing decentralized or external service provision would be uneconomical or technically unsound for the Library as a whole.
|
From page 202... ...
Findings and Recommendations Finding: As the Library increasingly outsources its information technology tasks, it will continue to need a strong in-house information technology organization to perform some in-house development, training, support, and operations and to review and monitor these outside contracts as well as to provide technical feedback on proposed contracts.4 Finding: The Library is underinvesting in the continuing education of its Information Technology Services Directorate staff in technical development and in new skills such as contract management. 4Or, as was done with NDLP, a relatively autonomous team formed within the Library.
|
From page 203... ...
. Recommendation: A practice and a budget should be established to partner members of the Information Technology Services Directorate staff who are interested in exploring a particular new technology with staff in the service units or with outside institutions that are interested in working on a pilot project applicable to the Library's needs.
|
From page 204... ...
About 150 people throughout the Library do most of the frontline support. There is one IT support person for every 25 desktop PCs (counting staff in ITS and staff in the service units)
|
From page 205... ...
A strategic plan for this area would instead set a goal of moving as quickly as possible (perhaps in small steps) toward a modern, distributed authentication technology, sometimes called "single login" or "network login." Several such schemes are now available using, for example, encrypted telnet, IPSec, X.509 certificates, and Kerberos; they would address the confusion that password propagation is trying to reduce and at the same time eliminate many other alarming security exposures, such as
|
From page 206... ...
Resources should be devoted immediately to understanding the Library's distributed security needs and concerns. A series of audits targeted at issues such as network access, distributed authentication, access control, and Web security would be the first step in getting specific professional advice on the topics (much as the National Security Agency's review of CRS systems impelled CRS to secure its part of the network)
|
From page 207... ...
As discussed in the Digital Dilemma,7 there are still many outstanding issues, both technical and socioeconomic, including He need to control who can view the contents of an item, what can be copied or referenced from an item, and even how searches and indexing can be supported over all items while still honoring the heterogeneous restrictions involved. The ITS Data Center Disaster Recovery Strategies and other planning documents outline LC's proposed approach to anticipating a variety of potential disasters that could compromise or destroy LC's unique collections or make its resources unavailable to the Congress and the nation.
|
From page 208... ...
or to begin dropping data when operating well below their rated capacity.8 This latter concern regarding overload does not currently affect the LC network, presumably because the aggregate load on the ATM switch is being limited by the low-speed token rings. As those token rings are replaced with 100 megabit/second Ethernets and the routers are upgraded for higher data rates, it is likely that the shortcomings of the ATM switch will become more apparent.
|
From page 209... ...
To meet its goals, ITS needs to have a clear, long-term plan to ensure adequate database administration and application support in the future. As it stands, ITS faces a substantial maintenance burden for each of these applications.
|
From page 210... ...
Information retrieval technology has become much more visible with the popularity of Web searching. Once the purview of trained searchers, today's retrieval software allows novice users to find information on the Web, a collection that is huge by We standards of a few years ago.
|
From page 211... ...
Support for foreign language retrieval, important for applications in the Law Library and Library Services, is weak. Several other retrieval issues have been identified but are not yet being addressed: in particular, the need for access control within the search engines (as discussed in the IT security section above)
|
From page 212... ...
It also needs to replace the ATM switch with Ethernet switches of 1 gigabit or greater and institute continuous performance measurement of internal network usage and Internet access usage. The Congress should provide funding to support these upgrades.
|
From page 213... ...
Recommendation: The Library should establish disk-based storage for online data and for an online disaster recovery facility using low-cost commodity disks. The Library should also experiment with disk mirroring across a network to two or three distant sites that maintain replicas, for availability and reliability of archives, and use tapes exclusively to hold files that are rarely needed.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.