CNI Podcast: An Interview with Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard, Director of Development at the State and University Library, Denmark

In this 15 minute podcast we feature an interview with Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard, Director of Development at the State and University Library in Aarhus, Denmark. She spoke at the CNI Fall 2007 Task Force Meeting, where she was co-presenting two sessions- "Explorative Search and the Library Catalog" and "International Digitial Preservation".

Summa, the search system of the State and University Library in Aarhus, Denmark, addresses many of the issues raised in a number of recently published studies, including the observation that the traditional library catalog cannot compete with other services when it comes to explorative search, as well as the realization that the catalog is only suitable as a localization tool for known items. The challenge is to develop an application which will satisfy the users’ expectations for a modern search system.

Summa is an open source system implementing modular, service-based architecture. It is based on the fundamental idea "free the content from the proprietary library systems," where the discovery layer is separated from the business layer. In doing so, any Internet technology can be used without the limitations traditionally set by proprietary library systems, and there is the flexibility to integrate or to be integrated into other systems. A first version of a Fedora - Summa integration has been developed.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2007 Fall Task Force Meeting.  The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity.  You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org