Through its service called “AGent Digital Collections,” Auto-Graphics has extended its product line to include a platform for helping libraries create, and provide access to, digitized collections of local content. Auto-Graphics specializes in products offered through the ASP (application service provider) model, a model in which the vendor hosts the software on its own servers. The company's federated search, resource sharing, and ILS products follow this approach as well.
Auto-Graphics designed the AGent Digital Collections service to enable its library customers to provide patrons with access to digital collections—without the time-consuming requirement for libraries to maintain their own infrastructures. A completely Web-based product, AGent Digital Collections provides users with the capability to define a collection; upload digital files; and describe the files. It also provides access to the collection through a professionally designed interface. Library staff members can use the Web-based interface to catalog the objects in the collection, and once the library uploads and describes the files, they become immediately available to users and patrons. Offered via a subscription model, the service charges no additional monies related to the amount of storage used.
To prepare the content for use with AGent Digital Collections, a library staff member can either scan the items in-house or outsource that work. In addition, Auto-Graphics provides libraries with a service that assists in the scanning, cataloging, and indexing of a collection.
