Oxford Preserves Rich History with Sun-Powered Digital Library
 As the oldest university in the English-speaking world, the University of Oxford is a rich blend of old and new. Its main library, the Bodleian Library, was established by Sir Thomas Bodley over 400 years ago and serves as the United Kingdom's library of record, similar to the U.S. Library of Congress. Oxford's permanent collection includes some of the oldest and most valuable manuscripts in existence.
At the same time, Oxford is at the forefront of digital technology. The library maintains an extensive collection of digital media such as electronic journals and e-books. Much of its historical collection is made available to scholars as electronic "surrogates" to improve access and to prevent wear and tear on priceless original manuscripts. Oxford collaborates with Google and other Web 2.0 enterprises to incorporate technologies such as search and digital archiving.
Recently, the university turned to Sun Microsystems and its partner VTLS Inc. to upgrade its highly specialized library management system (LMS). The Sun-powered infrastructure ensures scalability and availability for the LMS used by students, faculty, and researchers while minimizing support expenses. Oxford has also replaced hundreds of desktop PCs with Sun Ray systems that offer users cool, quieter and more secure access to the library's extensive catalog.
Updating the Library Management System
The scope of Oxford's information management challenge is daunting. Oxford is comprised of 39 colleges, each with its own internal structure and activities. The university includes 119 separate libraries with a collection of 9 million books. Users request 9000 library resources a week. Cataloging these materials and responding to these requests requires a specialized LMS tailored for the large distributed university environment. Only a few vendors make such systems, including VTLS, located in Blacksburg, Virginia. Sun and VTLS have a strong partnership: Nearly 75 percent of VTLS implementations are on Sun systems.
By 2004, Oxford's LMS was reaching its end of life. After an extensive evaluation, the university chose to replace it with VTLS Virtua software. Virtua won because it met a number of stringent criteria — support for Oxford's consortium library model; ability to manage non-Roman scripts such as Chinese, Japanese and Arabic; and automated stack request support. This last feature will be particularly important as Oxford migrates its 9-million-item collection to a controlled-atmosphere warehouse with robotic retrieval.
To host the VTLS software, Oxford also needed to upgrade the platform. "It was a no-brainer to turn to Sun," says Dave Price, head of systems and e-research. "We've been a Sun site since 1991, when we installed a Sun 10 running SunOS 4.13 as a primary platform for our library systems."
Oxford chose Sun Fire E2900 servers running the Solaris 10 Operating System. While some groups within the university are moving to Linux, Price stayed with a sure thing: "Solaris 10 provides an industrial-grade, bulletproof platform with the performance and support that Oxford needed to fulfill its mission."
Oxford supports not only its own students and faculty but a worldwide research community, so around-the-clock operation is imperative, with no unscheduled downtime. The university wanted to have a fresh look at availability, so it called Sun.
"Sun Professional Services was absolutely outstanding," remembers Price. "And the team came up with the right solution, including Solaris Cluster 3.1 software. Our local Sun partner, Q Associates, provided helpful advice as well. Q Associates worked together with Sun from the first sales call. Personalization and attention to detail from Q Associates in partnership with Sun is one of the factors that made this solution work so well."
Expecting to use the VTLS software for a decade or more, Oxford needed to be sure that the platform could grow with the university's needs. The Sun/Solaris platform provides the right mix of affordability and scalability to ensure that Oxford will be able to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of students, faculty, and scholars.
Sun 'Honeycomb' Storage Makes the Grade
Oxford is also using a Sun StorageTek 5800 system to "ingest" outputs from the Electronic Ephemera project — digitized items from the world-famous John Johnson Collection — and also a large number of 19th-century books scanned for the Google Library Project. The Sun StorageTek 5800 system (often referred to by its code name, "Honeycomb") will be connected to a number of digital repositories based on the open source Fedora platform. Also, the Bodleian Library expects to be able to exploit the special features of the Sun system to accelerate Fedora-related processes and activities.
Sun Fire X4500 data servers are providing the ideal platform for consolidating file shares on the administrative side. But the most promising storage application for Oxford may be the Sun Honeycomb project. Jeffries explains: "Honeycomb is uniquely suited to our needs at Oxford. We plan to use it to store large digital objects as well as all the metadata associated with them. It's like a digital bookshelf."
While Oxford relies on a number of specific Sun technologies and products, the relationship runs much deeper. Sun's commitment to the education sector gives Oxford confidence that it can continue to look to its evolving mission and not worry about infrastructure issues.
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"Oxford's relationship with Sun goes beyond technology. Sun has the support and experience that we need for our digital library projects. Sun is committed to open source, giving us flexibility to grow and adapt. Many other vendors will go for the quick fix; Sun understands our long-term objectives and helps us achieve them."
David Price
Head of Systems and e-Research
University of Oxford
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A Partner for the Long Haul
Price describes the challenges: "We take a long view here at Oxford. When David Vaisey was Bodley's Librarian, he liked to say that most of our readers haven't yet been born. These materials have to endure, and they have to be accessible, no matter how technology evolves.
"We've found that Sun is extremely willing to share in the problems and issues that we in the academic world are facing: rights management, metadata standards, digital preservation and many more. Sun participates in these discussions and that informs Sun's product development.
"Oxford's relationship with Sun goes beyond technology," Price concludes. "Sun has the support and experience that we need for our digital library projects. Sun is committed to open source, giving us flexibility to grow and adapt. Other vendors go for the quick fix; Sun understands our long-term objectives and helps us achieve them."
Sun Ray Systems Offer Cooler, Quieter, More Secure User Access
While managing a library's holdings is a challenge in and of itself, Oxford also needs to provide students, faculty, and researchers with access to the holdings. Oxford had traditionally provided user access to information services through PCs running Microsoft Windows. However, managing PCs at 119 different sites is expensive and time-consuming.
"Keeping them virus free, making sure they're secure, implementing patches — it's very resource intensive," explains Neil Jeffries, R&D project manager. "We had good luck by using Citrix to move the applications back to the datacenter. So we wanted to take the next step in virtualization." Also, the VTLS Virtua software was incompatible with the existing PCs, so the university would have to buy new ones — or consider other desktop options.
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"Sun Rays make life much, much simpler. We have better control over the applications and usage, and it has a much smaller footprint in terms of space, power and heat generation."
Neil Jeffries
R&D Manager
University of Oxford
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Sun recommended thin client technology and donated 20 Sun Ray 2 virtual display clients free of charge to Oxford under the Sun Academic Excellence Grant program. The university used them to construct a proof of concept. Based on that successful trial, Oxford has deployed 270 Sun Ray systems. Sun Fire V240 servers, running the Solaris 10 OS and clustered with Solaris Cluster 3.1 software, host the Sun Ray software in a ratio of one server cluster for every 30 Sun Ray systems.
The Sun Ray 2 Virtual Display Client is a great fit for the Oxford environment. "Sun Rays make life much, much simpler," says Jeffries. "We have better control over the applications and usage, and it has a smaller footprint in terms of space, power, and heat generation."
The lower power requirements are important to Oxford on several fronts. Like all educational institutions, the university has to cope with rising electricity rates. A typical Sun Ray system uses just 4 watts, compared to 100 watts or more for the average PC. Price's staff has calculated that each Sun Ray system saves the university about £18 GBP ($36 USD) per year in electricity costs alone. With all 270 systems deployed, the annual savings total is nearly £5,000 GBP ($10,000 USD). And this does not include the savings in air conditioning costs.
The Sun Ray thin clients integrate better into the university environment. They put out less heat — a godsend for Oxford's small rooms in non-air conditioned buildings — and are quieter than PCs, a boon to students prepping for exams and writing papers.
The IT department is benefiting, too. It takes just 30 minutes a year on average to support a Sun Ray system, compared to 12 hours per PC — a 96 percent reduction. For 270 units, that translates into over 3000 hours per year, or 1.5 full-time equivalents (FTEs). Oxford saves additional time administering the Sun Ray servers — 15 days per year for the Sun clusters compared to 30 days for the same number of PC clusters.
"Sun Professional Services provided in-depth expertise," says Jeffries. "And Q Associates — our Sun reseller — worked together with Sun from the first sales call. Personalization and attention to detail from Q Associates in partnership with Sun is one of the factors that made this solution work so well."
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