How Pinellas Public Library Coorperative Reduced Operational Complexity in its Digital Repository Migration to Aurora

Background

The Pinellas Public Library Cooperative (PPLC) is a nonprofit organization that facilitates cooperation, collaboration, and shared services among member libraries across Pinellas County, Florida.

Today, PPLC supports shared systems and services across its network of 18 member institutions, including a unified library automation system, materials delivery, and collective purchasing. The cooperative model also enables participating libraries to coordinate resources, programs, and expertise across institutions, serving nearly half a million registered borrowers.

The digital collections managed through this network include newspapers, photographs, video, sound recordings, and other archival materials used by public patrons, genealogists, and local history researchers.

The Challenge

Over time, PPLC’s digital collections had been supported by several different platforms, including a homegrown database, ContentDM, and a modified Islandora environment. Each system introduced its own limitations. One platform was described as rigid and unresponsive to change. The environment that followed made bulk editing difficult, a real obstacle for a cooperative managing large shared collections. "You don't really want to hand-edit 4,000 records," noted Michelle Arnold, Countywide Services Manager, describing a photograph collection that required a straightforward ownership field correction across thousands of assets.

User permissions presented another challenge. “You actually had a lot of very fine control, but you weren’t exactly sure what each control did,” said Keith Law, the team’s technical lead. Finding the right balance of permissions took several weeks, with access assigned through a trial-and-error process as settings were adjusted incrementally and tested in practice, creating additional administrative effort and uncertainty when managing shared collection access.

The Decision & Migration Experience

The migration process itself, which included over 60,000 total objects and 76 collections, stood out. Regular weekly check-ins kept the team aligned and the project moving forward. Michelle noted that previous migrations often meant hearing nothing for stretches at a time, then suddenly being handed a massive list of urgent tasks all at once. "It was better to be able to handle things as they came up," she said. Keith echoed the sentiment: "It was a much smoother transition and I think the whole way the support and the communication was handled was very very good indeed."

The Outcome