Customer Story:
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
The Charlotte Mecklenburg Library implemented TIND Digital Archive to consolidate collections, enrich metadata, and improve operations with advanced batch tools and robust digital preservation features.
The Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, serving the population of Greater Charlotte, North Carolina, is a cornerstone of knowledge and community and its nearly one million residents. With 23 branches, the library prides itself on providing the citizens of Charlotte with access to its many diverse resources, including digitized local content. John O`Connor is the manager of The Robinson-Spangler Room at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library – a special unit within the library housing archives and special collections responsible for the management and safekeeping of cultural heritage records.
"One of my favorite features of TIND DA is the user interface. People expect a big search box, right, Google has popularised that. And that’s what they get with TIND.
Having a nice UI on the backend is also really a critical piece for me. For my staff to be able to work with this platform and not having to do a bunch of training is really key for keeping my lean staff doing digitization work efficiently."John O´Connor, Manager of The Robinson-Spangler Room at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s Robinson-Spangler Room has a rich history of digitizing various materials, including photographs, postcards, and archival collections, spanning several decades. However, the previous platform encountered significant obstacles, including the inability to consolidate and safeguard all digital assets and their associated metadata, which were scattered across the platform and stored in a local shared drive. The platform, developed in 2005, also lacked the intuitive and user-friendly interface that today's web users expect. Finally, the library was concerned that future development in the legacy platform would require additional training or technical staff for ongoing management.
Recognizing the need for a more advanced and effective platform, the library searched for a suitable replacement through a thorough exploration and evaluation of digital asset management and preservation systems.
After exploring various options, John and the team decided on TIND Digital Archive, a cloud-based archival solution offering a blend of user-centric design, sophisticated asset management and preservation capabilities that aligned perfectly with the library's digitization objectives. This choice was influenced by John's previous experiences with open-source systems and the hidden costs often associated with them. TIND DA offered a streamlined, efficient solution without the need for extensive in-house technical support.
"We chose TIND because the interface was easy to use for both the public and our staff. We were impressed by how flexible TIND is when adding new items and editing metadata for those items. We loved that TIND uses MARC for its descriptive metadata, allowing us to quickly and easily train cataloging staff to help with digitization and digital archiving.
We have seen a lot more efficient use of our material and a lot more efficiency in finding material."
John O´Connor
The implementation of TIND DA was a game-changer for the library. The repository was first launched with the "La Noticia Historical Archive," a significant Spanish language newspaper in Mecklenburg County. TIND DA's full-text search capabilities allowed users to explore the newspaper's extensive archives with ease.
John’s team noted the user-friendly workflow for adding content to TIND DA. For photographs, the process involves digitization, cleaning, metadata creation, and then uploading using either the submission form or the batch uploader. The library's expertise in MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) played a crucial role in efficiently creating metadata for these digital items.
A key example of TIND DA's utility was evident in managing the "La Noticia" archival collection. Initially, the archive had Spanish language descriptions, but recognizing the diverse user base, John added English descriptions using TIND DA's native batch editing tool. This tool proved invaluable to the project, enabling English language metadata to be quickly and accurately updated across individual records.
John’s team noted TIND's customer service as “exceptional,” with responsive support and comprehensive documentation. This support was crucial during the initial setup and ongoing use, especially compared to the often inconsistent documentation and resources from open-source alternatives. Because the system was so intuitive and easy to use, the library ended up doing the whole migration themselves.
"During implementation, we've worked with a project manager who has been really, really fantastic. He was very detail-oriented and got us to think through a lot of things about how we would want to organize our metadata that we didn't necessarily think about, to begin with."
- John O´Connor
TIND DA is not just a tool but the foundation of Charlotte Mecklenburg Library's digitization strategy, according to John. Recognizing the limitations some patrons face in physically accessing the library, John is committed to expanding digital access to the library's treasures. Upcoming projects include integrating new scanning technologies for sheet-based documents and expanding the digital archive to include more of the library's vast and unique collections.
