Australian War Memorial in records clean-up

November/December Edition, 2007: The pressure of converting from paper-based to digital records has been a significant hurdle for the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In recognising users prefer their content digitally; the Memorial has moved to deploy a content management and recordkeeping solution to consolidate its assets.

Daryl Winterbottom, head of information technology at the Memorial says they will work with Interwoven and Alphawest for the provision of an end-to-end content management system covering the Memorial’s website content and collection of digital assets in conjunction with the deployment of a document management system.

“At the end of the project, War Memorial staff will see an improvement in searching capabilities of electronic records,” says Winterbottom. “They will be able to share information resulting in better knowledge management and have the ongoing capability to store and manage large volumes of digital media while at the same time providing this material to the public in a timely and efficient way.”

Over four million people visited the Memorial’s website last year, a growing testament to the fact those researching family military history are keener than ever to source their resources online. Meanwhile digitising the paper-based records means a hefty increase in storage, expected to grow up to 100 terabytes over the next three to five years.

The War Memorial will soon deploy the Interwoven based document management system in order to accommodate this increasing move into the digital market. A selection of products will be deployed from Interwoven who will partner with Alphawest to replace various in-house systems unable to scale with the Memorial’s increased storage and application of digital video and sound.

Comment on this story.