Slovak National Library

Story Details

The Slovak National Library is dedicated to providing modern technology resources as well as access to important cultural and scientific information to the public. It continuously strives to improve its own services and IT environment, and it also coordinates the development of the library system of the Slovak Republic.

The library needed to provide free access to information available on the Internet. It also faced external pressure to upgrade its services: In 2002, the government required all libraries to deliver public Internet access. The Slovak Ministry of Culture, which was responsible for implementing the change, focused on public libraries because only 20 percent of all libraries were connected to the Internet. Smaller towns and communities were even less likely to have Internet resources, a situation that was unacceptable to the government and the Slovak National Library. The library believed that every citizen, regardless of the size of the community he or she lives in, should have open access to information.

The Ministry of Culture and the Slovak National Library initiated a project with a long-term strategy for improving the library system’s IT infrastructure. Goals included establishing 780 public Internet access points throughout 110 libraries in Slovakia. Central management was another key priority, because many smaller libraries lacked IT staff.

With help from Tempest, an IT services provider, the library decided to implement a virtualized desktop solution built on Sun Ray technology from Sun Microsystems. The library had completed wide-scale deployment projects in the past, but those were mostly limited to the university campus environment. The solution from Sun Microsystems would be the library’s first nationwide deployment, and it wanted to take advantage of the professionalism and expertise offered by Sun Microsystems and Tempest. Validating that trust, implementation was complete within three months.

The centralized solution is much easier to manage than local desktops. Sun Ray virtual display clients do not contain resident operating systems, applications, or disk drives. Instead, the terminals connect over a network to productivity applications and operating systems managed remotely in a central data center. Software upgrades and configuration changes are made at the server level instead of on individual desktops significantly reducing deployment time.

Additionally, the Sun Ray virtual display clients have greatly reduced the library’s operating costs, because thousands of virtual desktops can be managed with just a small IT staff. Energy costs have also decreased because the virtual display clients consume a fraction of the energy of traditional desktops.

Sun Ray Software 4 runs on the Solaris 10 Operating System providing the flexibility the library needs because it can deliver a variety of desktop operating systems, including Windows. In addition, users have more than just free Internet access —they can use OpenOffice 2.0, Skype communications programs, and Web-based services such as online library catalogs and e-government applications. More centralized services, such as the Portal of Culture, the European Library, and the Memory of Slovakia digital library, will be available in the future. The Slovak National Library also plans to add 2,000 more Sun Ray virtual display clients, ensuring that all libraries in Slovakia will be connected to the Internet.