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IBM TO HELP U.S. GOVERNMENT CREATE MOVING IMAGES LIBRARY

Three major universities have selected Linux on IBM POWER technology to build the Library of Congress' first centralized online catalog of film, television and digital video images from libraries, national archives, museums and broadcasting companies. The centralized online catalog will ultimately be the largest repository in the world for digital moving images and will greatly expand the Library of Congress' ability to provide video images of the nation's most-treasured and important images - all as one resource accessible over the Internet.

The three universities - the University of Washington, Rutgers University Libraries, and the Georgia Institute of Technology Interactive Media Technology Center - have received a $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the project, which was originally commissioned for design by The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), through a grant from the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. In 2004, the Library of Congress will be the host site for the Moving Images Collection (MIC) after its development and together with the AMIA will continue to participate in its continued growth and design to provide a single point of access, much like an Internet search engine, for all users, as well as allow digital image preservationists to collaborate in sharing and maintaining the various images.

The University of Washington and Rutgers University will use IBM eServer pSeries systems running the Linux operating system to design and develop the directory and catalog databases of digital images. Georgia Institute of Technology will use the pSeries systems to develop the Web portal where users will access the actual information on the Internet and enter in their key search terms.

Together, the three universities will benefit from IBM's POWER technology as each server will support the Linux operating system and take advantage Linux's open, flexible and scalable architecture to grow significantly with the project and users' demands of the MIC project.

The MIC databases and web portal will be powered by two IBM eServer p630 and two p610 models running SuSE Linux Enterprise SLES 8 and leveraging IBM directory server. The p630 and p610 systems will serve as the gate to the database and permits users to search and locate the moving images. After finding the video images with MIC, users can then make arrangements directly with the content providers to obtain permission to view or reference the moving images. Many moving images will be available for direct streaming via a link in the catalog record.