ITC

Significant themes in 2012

2012 was an eventful year in ITC. Besides supporting the libraries and functioning as the joint function for Culture and Citizens’ Services, which are our core tasks, we have worked on a number of projects.

Towards increased use of digital resources

eReolen – a project subsidised by the Danish Agency for Culture – really captured users with more than 700,000 loans nationwide. The technical platform was improved and this is an effort that continues into 2013.

The gymnasium concept (Danish upper secondary school) was created in collaboration with a number of gymnasiums in Aarhus. The project is about supporting pupils’ information literacy skills focusing on the comprehensive "AT" assignments. The aim is e.g. to utilize the libraries digital resources.

Ding2tal, a somewhat IT-nerdy project, will generate the future national library CMS. It is a common template which all municipalities, in principle, will be able to use via participation in the Danish Digital Library. Further development of the website as a platform for communication will take place in collaboration with the participating libraries. This will reduce costs and possibly make sure that the Danish libraries are on the cutting edge when it comes to digital communication.

We also entered into an exciting new EU project entitled Eawareness. Its purpose is to promote the use and knowledge of the large European database for cultural heritage, Europeana. EAwareness will also encourage citizens and cultural institutions to continue delivering content to Europeana.

National collaboration

Aarhus has initiated a common national tender on the library system for Danish primary and lower secondary school and school libraries, and 2012 has been marked by this to a great extent. Gathering the parties and then preparing such a large tender is a large task and it is carried out in collaboration with KOMBIT. The libraries’ professional project manager is on loan from Aarhus.

Local initiatives

2012 has also been used for preparing for the replacement of the libraries’ public access computers. This occurs at the same time as introducing a new user interface. The system was created as Open Source and user surveys have already shown that users have accepted and are positive toward the new platform. Also, the library saves license expenses while gaining a new and modern platform.

Development projects

Finurlige Fakta (Fantastic Facts), which is subsidised by the Agency for Culture, gathers and verifies tiny facts that people did not really know they needed to know. The purpose is e.g. to show the library as facilitator in transforming information into knowledge. The service is already quite widely disseminated and integrated in a number of websites.

DigiForm, another project which is related to libraries, aims to create prototypes for installations and services that generate relations between the physical and digital library. We have produced a number of installations and services, e.g. the “Netto-scanner” which scans books and provides the user with additional information about the book, books like it, access to the e-book etc. The scanner is currently at Aarhus Main Library but will in future be distributed to all libraries.

New development projects

Giving the outside world access to data that previously was hidden is what is known as OpenData. In Aarhus this has turned into the project OpenData Aarhus (ODAA), which is rooted in ITC. The project has created the first regional OpenData portal in the country and is currently working on collecting data that can be disseminated and used for a large number of purposes. We would like the large amount of data to be available to and used by companies to create applications and services that a business can be based on.

ITC has a large portfolio of tasks and solves many tasks for the libraries but an increasing amount of tasks for other parts of Aarhus Municipality as well.

Badeanstalten Spanien (public swimming pool), By i Bevægelse and PUF are some of the institutions which ITC has developed a new website for. Also, a number of departments in Aarhus Municipality have had their Sitecore subsites redesigned by ITC.

Colophon

Editor: Rolf Hapel
Text, layout and translation: ITC Design
© Citizens' Services and Libraries, ITC
Møllegade 1, 8000 Aarhus C
E-mail: design@mkb.aarhus.dk
www.aakb.dk