DIY: CONTENTdm to LUNA

The University Of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL) completed a massive migration of over 300,000 items from CONTENTdm to the LUNA software system this year in only 2 months.  The entire project was completed in that short time by John Weise, Technical Services Librarian at UNL and one student assistant. John worked on extracting data from CONTENTdm, while his assistant created data templates in LUNA so that data could be seamlessly transferred from the old system, into the new.

One of the keys to their success was having Luna’s sales team grant UNL access to a proof of concept instance of LUNA. John was able to test the process of migrating large amounts of content into LUNA. Being able to experiment proved to John that one person could do the whole migration without the need for additional professional services.

When asked what attracted the University to LUNA, John explained that a number of factors influenced the purchasing committee. The flexibility of the sales team to allow the University a test drive of the product before purchasing and the level of customer service and responsiveness throughout was impressive to John in particular. The interface, the BookReader tool, the ability to move items from one collection to another and the Hosted Service pricing model attracted the group as a whole. Speaking with other clients and learning that Luna releases software updates regularly, often times with features requested by its community of users, played a compelling role in the decision as well.

UNL plans to roll LUNA out this Fall with hopes of generating interest among other departments on campus. Meanwhile, the process of cleaning up data and adding more content from different sources continues.

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