Aylesbury, UK – 12 June2014: The National Archives of Australia (NAA) has gone live on time and on budget with a new audio visual asset management system developed in conjunction with TMD, the leading provider of media asset management systems for digital and physical assets in a single system. The extensive project, with a TMD team collaborating from the original scoped work through to final commissioning and testing, provides NAA with the ability to control all of the audio visual media it holds on behalf of the Australian government and its agencies – “preserving the memory of our nation” as the NAA describes it.
The Mediaflex implementation at the NAA follows a similar very large-scale project at the National Film and Sound Archives of Australia. The system provides the NAA with a scalable and extensible data model with which to manage both physical and digital assets in single collection.
The NAA’s audio visual collection had been managed by two in-house systems. One has now been replaced with Mediaflex, and in partnership with the NAA, TMD developed a tight integration with the remaining business system. This ensures continuity and familiarity for the many researchers who use the NAA, while providing a secure path for future growth. TMD’s solution provides an array of benefits, all managed by workflows, for physical and digital lending of assets back to agencies, acquisition, and ensuring that the physical storage complies with stringent levels of accountability.
“Weknew that we had a specific set of requirements, and the chosen solution needed to be robust, scalable and flexible as we transition to digital delivery and a digital archive and continue to control nearly a million individual audio visual records ,” said David Fricker, Director General of the NAA. “TMD worked closely with the NAA in all aspects of the project, including detailed scoping, project management and Governance in conjunction with Senior Stakeholder Robyn Gamble and Project Manager Rose Holley and their implementation team. By putting an excellent team on site and using modern agile development techniques, we could clearly understand what was happening and provide feedback throughout the project. The result is something I can confidently say will meet the highest standards of audio visual collection management and digital preservation for the National Archives.”
“This was a great project to work on and the collaboration between the teams helped the project go live on schedule, which is a major achievement for a project of this size,” said Carlton Smith, CTO of TMD who led this project. “Our solution, managed by our workflow engine, provides the NAA with comprehensive auditing and reporting capabilities, improvements and efficiencies in the management of acquisition, digital delivery, preservation and physical storage and other business opportunities to fully capitalise the digital collection using digital workflows.
“Managing a mixture of physical and digital assets is challenging; managing nearly a million of them is even more challenging; and ensuring they are preserved to the standard expected of a national archive adds yet another level,” Smith added. “There could be no clearer demonstration of the power, capabilities and scalability of Mediaflex.”
The project to implement the Mediaflex asset management system at NAA started in May 2012 and went into production in May 2014.
TMD will be exhibiting at BroadcastAsia on stand 5E4-05 and also be presenting “How to successfully implement a real-time, file-basedworkflow” at the Broadcast Engineering and Technology Conference (Track 4) on 19 June as part of theBroadcastAsia Conference 2014.
NOTETO EDITOR:
David Fricker, Director General of the NAA, has been elected as President of the International Council on Archives (ICA) taking effect from October 2014. He joined the NAA in 2012, following a distinguished career in IT, including five years as the CIO of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
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About TMD
TMD is a global leader focused on designing and delivering media &content management solutions and associated services to the global media, broadcast and archive sectors. Headquartered in Aylesbury UK the company’s Mediaflex software applications provide a platform for the management of botht raditional physical media, such as film and video tape, as well as digital content. TMD’s global reach includes office locations in the USA and Australia. For additional information on TMD products and services, please visit www.tmd.tv.
About NAA
The National Archives of Australia can best be described as the memory of our nation –collecting and preserving Australian Government records that reflect Australian history and identity. The collection traces events and decisions that have shaped the nation and the lives of Australians. Visitors are welcome to explore our collection, online or in person, to learn more. The National Archives has two main roles: to preserve Australia’s most valuable government records and encourage their use by the public; and to promote good record smanagement by Australian Government agencies. For more information, visit www.naa.gov.au
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High resolution image of NAA using TMD Mediaflex can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3vdzclvskj2too7/NAA%20using%20TMD%20Mediaflex%20June%202014.JPG
