Digital collections: How amusing
Published: 19 November 2008 13:07 GMT
The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) is upgrading its storage systems to cope with the demand for images across its website.
silicon.com Retail & Leisure
Get the latest retail and leisure news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the R&L newsletter today!
Alongside the growing digital asset library of its physical collections, the museum, which specialises in art and design, is also compiling an archive of wholly digital artefacts for posterity and the storage upgrade will form the cornerstone of the strategy.
Talking to silicon.com, V&A head of information systems services Sarah Winmill said the image library contains 50,000 images of artefacts, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the 4.5 million objects in the museum's collection.
The museum's storage system is reaching capacity just as it is starting to realise a remit for reaching out to people who are unable to physically visit the building, sited in west London, through its website.
"Our website is of huge importance in our remit of opening up interpretation around our collections. We are pushing the boundaries around making print quality images available to the public online, which means opening up our internal storage architecture," Winmill said.
Along with pictures of artefacts, the museum also displays documentary images of work going on to restore objects within its workshops.
The V&A has invested in a storage system from Hitachi Data Systems with 120TB of capacity designed to support the museum's strategy for growth in digital assets for the next five years.
Winmill said the museum is now collecting digitally native artefacts, which have no physical shape, so the only way to view them will be through the museum's website.
The storage architecture will have a mirrored system, installed this spring, as a back up to make sure that any of these digital collections are not lost if the primary repository fails.
The storage system went live in October but the switch over from the legacy platform, provided by EMC will not take place until the end of 2009.
HP buy plays into the hands of virtualisation
Video: Flying high with Bletchley's flight simulators
Photos: Britain's first business computer
Photos: Cutting edge art at the National Gallery
Photos: Babbage's Difference masterpiece in action
The nine projects at the heart of NHS IT
This is an exciting and challenging role with excellent potential and remit. You will also be the point of contact for Business objects ...
They are specifically looking for someone with Image experience, working with models at castings etc capturing the emotion behind some of the shots ...
Acting as Ambassador for IT through current organisational change your core remit will be to develop and deliver a clear IT Strategy throughout the ...
Agenda Setters 2009
Welcome to the ninth annual Agenda Setters poll – silicon.com's list of the top 50 most influential individuals in the technology and IT industries, from techies and CIOs to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Find out more in our latest special report.
Stories from the web...
Copyright © 2008 CBS Interactive Limited. All rights reserved. Top of page
Petra Papinniemi
Legal Eye: Ecommerce held back by outdated laws
No wonder no one's buying...
Matthew Cushen
E-tailers: Be choosy overseas
Markets are not always what they seem
Tim Ferguson
'If you look at iPlayer from a distance, it's still very web 1.0'
Q&A: Erik Huggers, director, BBC's Future, Media and Technology
Kit Burden
Legal Eye: Tech could brighten retailers' gloom
Regulation and recession loom
Matthew Cushen
Retailers: Look to emerging markets
Comment: Massive opportunities if you get the IT right
Julian Goldsmith
How Zavvi lost its Virginity
IT director Tony Johnson on the retailer's changing web strategy