Reengineering The Portal to Texas HistorySM

This case study reports the activities, findings, and lessons learned during a project that replaced the legacy Digital Asset Management (DAM) system of The Portal to Texas History? at the University of North Texas Libraries with an open source system. This unique system decouples the application development framework from the backend infrastructure, effectively relieving the development and growth constraints inherent in the legacy system. In a novel approach for an academic library, genealogists participated in the user-centered, iterative approach used to prototype, develop, and test the user interface. The resulting system promoted productivity gains by enabling programming staff to work in parallel from specialized areas of expertise. A post-project review process identified a number of lessons learned, including the importance of representing the requirements and priorities of internal and external stakeholders. The review process also informed an application development model that may be useful to other digital libraries.