West Library will use Quartex’s powerful and flexible asset management capabilities to migrate eleven online collections which currently exist in disparate platforms. The team will then plan new digital collections to showcase the unique materials held by the Library, as well as the history of the University.

Caitlin Rookey, digital initiatives librarian at West Library, said “Adopting Quartex is a big deal for the Library. Our collections encompass both our institutional repository and digital archives, which have always been hosted separately. Quartex will enable us to bring all these resources together into a platform that will be much easier to manage.”

Following the migration, the Library team aims to build and publish new online collections starting with its George Anson Collection which celebrates the University’s professor emeritus of music composition from 1941 until 1970. This collection includes manuscripts of George Anson’s musical compositions and music reviews for the Clavier magazine, as well as further assets relating to his teaching career at Texas Wesleyan.

Collections such as this, incorporating multiple asset formats, will make the most of Quartex’s search and discovery capabilities. These include Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) for manuscripts, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for printed text assets and A/V hosting and timecoded transcriptions for audio/visual assets, as well as automated, editable and fully searchable transcriptions of all text resources, whether printed or handwritten.

The West Library team is also excited to harness the power of the dynamic digital exhibits feature in Quartex to offer curated user experiences that deepen knowledge and understanding of the University’s history and special collections.

“One of the issues with our existing systems is the static look and feel of the collections sites. Quartex provides lots of options on layouts and seeing other repositories that are already using Quartex is a great source of inspiration,” said Rookey.

Quartex will be working closely with the West Library team to build the new collections site’s front-end.

“As part of Adam Matthew Digital, a primary source publisher with over 30 years of experience, we’re well placed to help the West Library team to create a really dynamic and engaging look and feel to their new collections site, with multiple pathways to discovery,” said Martin Drewe, head of customer experience at Adam Matthew Digital.

“We’re looking forward to working with West Library to bring its many collections together for the first time into one cohesive, accessible and user-friendly platform, and enhance its provision of digital resources for its diverse user community,” added Martin.

West Library’s migration to Quartex will be a primary focus throughout the summer, with the site launch expected in the fall of 2021.

To find out more about the partnership, please contact Martin Drewe, head of customer experience (martin@amdigital.co.uk).

About Adam Matthew Digital and Quartex

Adam Matthew Digital is an award-winning publisher of primary source content with 30 years’ experience identifying and making accessible primary resource collections from leading archives and libraries around the world. The publisher is an independent company within the SAGE Group, based in the United Kingdom, and has offices around the world. As its guiding philosophy, AM Digital believes that at the heart of education is the freedom to think critically. Each year it publishes new, relevant primary source collections that span a wide variety of topics ranging from gender and sexuality, literature, art, politics, war, business, popular culture and more. These curated collections are offered to academic institutions on a customized platform designed to maximize discoverability and drive usage of primary source content to enhance learning.

AM Digital’s experience of curating and showcasing archival collections has informed development of the technology underlying all the collections released, which ensures that customers can effectively discover, access, and explore the content published. This technology is made available, as Quartex, to libraries, archives and other heritage institutions, to facilitate digital open access publishing. Quartex is a hosted solution developed by a dedicated and skilled team of engineers. It is designed to support a broad range of repositories’ needs, including academic libraries, public libraries, and historical societies. It benefits from a continual program of investment and development, as new functionality is added to support the requirements of both customers and the AM Digital publishing schedule.