UP Using Olive for Digitization

University of Pennsylvania Libraries (UP) has selected Olive Software's ViewPoint solution for a project to digitize many of its rare and special collections into a fully indexed and searchable online archive. Materials include UP's Shakespeare rarities, letters from Benjamin Franklin, and the first Jewish newspaper, The Occident. After the project's completion, scholars worldwide will be able to use the Internet “to find, access, and perform text searches on rare documents from UP, rather than just view digital images online or request reproductions via mail or FAX,” Olive said.

UP, which has 15 libraries and more than five million volumes and 300 staffers, chose Olive as the solution that best fit its digital architecture, which relies heavily on metadata in the METS (Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard) schema. The first research library system to work with ViewPoint, UP selected the software after a long review process. Olive said that library execs “stressed the need for a technology solution that would allow them to manage the project in-house, given the large quantity of legacy material involved.”