Allan Bell
Associate University Librarian, Digital Programs and Services
The University of British Columbia
Mark Dehmlow
Program Director, Library Information Technology
University of Notre Dame
“A Partnership and New Model for UBC Library IT in the 21 Century” (Bell)
In November 2013 The University of British Columbia (UBC) Library and UBC Information Technology (IT) announced a new partnership in the resourcing and management of UBC Library’s IT. While a challenge to the Library’s IT service model, this opportunity benefits the Library greatly as it makes efforts to contextualize its place and role within the 21st century academic environment. From January to May 2014, the Library and UBC IT conducted a comprehensive assessment employing business analysis, enterprise architecture and infrastructure review practices. The purpose of the assessment was to determine the Library’s operational needs and the IT infrastructure and services required to sustainably support the Library and its users by UBC IT. This presentation will report on the assessment process, findings, recommendations and transition to service design process.
Presentation (Bell)
“Movin’ On Up: Planning for Moving an Academic Libraries’ Infrastructure to the Cloud” (Dehmlow)
As a part of a consortia of universities involved in early exploration of a comprehensive cloud strategy for academia, the University of Notre Dame was a co-author of the Cloud Strategy for Higher Education white paper published in November of 2014. Since that time, Notre Dame’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) has devised a “Cloud First” strategy to move 80% of its technical infrastructure into the cloud by the end of 2017. As a campus technology partner, the Hesburgh Libraries has begun planning for how we will bring our technological infrastructure in aligment with the central IT plan. Putting infrastructure into the cloud represents a radical shift in mindset for technology planning, shifting thinking about technology from assets that need replacement every five to seven years to thinking about IT as a monthly utility/service. This presentation will cover how the Hesburgh Libraries is shaping our plan to move a significant amount of our infrastructure into the cloud and the phases we have devised to meet the OIT’s 3 year plan. The presentation will include background on the University’s decision to move so much infrastructure to the cloud, our experimentation in Amazon Web Services (AWS), and how AWS differs from the organization’s current infrastructure, the assessment of the library service catalog, both in terms of function and usage, the determination of which hosting model meets the needs of our services (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, or On-Premises), how we will budget for the move, planning for the migration and roll out, and any other considerations libraries may need to evaluate in this process.
Presentation (Dehmlow)