Todd Digby
Chair of Library Technology Services
University of Florida
Judith Russell
Dean of University Libraries
University of Florida
Laurie Taylor
Senior Director for Library Technology & Digital Strategies
University of Florida
The University of Florida (UF) began digitizing in the 1990s, and launched the UF Digital Collections in 2006. In the past 15 years, the system has grown to over 15 million pages, with the system continually improved for production; however, the interface essentially stagnated for the past decade. The system was a monolith that powered both patron and production operations. The new system is also the first time the system has separation for production and patron access. While working on this critically needed change, we saw new hires for four of the five positions in the Development Team, with all four new hires starting during the pandemic. In this talk, we will share basic concepts of modern digital library systems (circuit breakers, patterns, DRY, maintainability), our process to de-couple the monolith, onboarding and team building even in a pandemic, and overall building for maintainability and community. We will also share the first-ever dedicated portal for the Florida Digital Newspaper Library.