Published on April 10, 2009

Academic and research institutions are digitizing, preserving and distributing vast amounts of electronic content at an enormous rate today -- from video, photos and animation, to research papers and visualization of scientific models. Like many universities, Penn State is striving to ensure that these immense electronic collections and storage repositories are easily accessible to users and will continue to be available to future generations.

Challenges like these are what keep data experts like Mark Saussure, director of Digital Library Infrastructure at ITS Penn State, up late at night. Saussure, who supports information technology initiatives at University Libraries, is using state-of-the-art data management storage tools to build a world-class research and library archive system that can endure for many years.

"Digital library platforms will change, but our first priority will always be to provide students and faculty with access to the information they need," said Saussure. "Needs such as these, in addition to the needs of faculty, staff, and our research partners at other institutions all need to be taken into account. With all these interrelated roles, being able to find information now, and long into the future, is just as important as how we store it."

Saussure and his team have recently been collaborating with HP to test digital tools that can be used across all of Penn State's many repository platforms. Primary among these tools is eXtensible Access Method (XAM), a new interface standard created by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) that is expected to help the University cohesively manage and provide access to its diverse digital library collections, electronic record archives, e-science and e-research data repositories.

"We're talking about hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of information from many sources,” said Saussure. XAM is the digital glue that brings all these data repositories together.

As part of its collaboration with HP, Penn State aims to develop a "tiered" electronic storage architecture to meet data discovery, corporate governance and regulatory compliance requirements for many years to come. The approach is part of the SNIA initiative to seek innovative applications for XAM through the efforts of global companies such as HP, EMC and Sun Microsystems. The initiative encourages universities, businesses and institutions to collaborate with one another to use the power of XAM to better manage the exploding demand for online storage.

"This is a collaboration that will not only benefit Penn State, but in many cases it will provide an effective solution for numerous institutions and businesses who have been struggling with this problem, as their research and archive storage systems evolve," Saussure added. "It's a winning strategy for everyone."

To learn more about Penn State Information Technology Services, visit ITS on the Web at http://its.psu.edu/.
To learn more about University Libraries at Penn State, visit http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul.html.
For more information about HP Information Management Solutions, visit http://www.hp.com/go/imhub.