If you think a public library has no need for specialized audio/video storage, think again. From Pulitzers to podcasts, Nashville Public Library does it all.
“We’re not your average library,” laughed Larry Jirik, Technology Services Manager at Nashville Public Library. Music City’s 21-branch library system produces incredible content every day, including educational reading videos, audio podcasts, and special appearances from renowned authors like Sally Field and the late Congressman John Lewis.
How It Started
“Years ago, our production team told me they needed more storage capacity for all of our content,” said Jirik. “We needed more than just storage, though. We needed to collaborate on editing projects, we needed a sandbox, and we needed to trust that we can access our storage at any time. So, I started doing research.”
Jirik’s research led him to an 8 Bay EVO media production server, a powerful audio and video editing storage system that benefits every part of his team’s post-production process.
“You can buy a storage appliance anywhere, but they aren’t designed around video and audio production workflows like EVO. They just store data; they don’t do much else,” Jirik added. “The tools that were available with EVO were a big selling point. That’s where EVO really stood out.”
Financing EVO for Public Institutions
When it came to placing the order and investing in post-production storage, Jirik explained how the tax-funded civil service organization funded their EVO purchase. “We often apply for grants for funding. We are very fortunate to have the Nashville Public Library Foundation which provides private donor money as well,” said Jirik. “After we presented our business case and what EVO would enable us to do in the video production department, we received the funding to purchase our first EVO… in 2013.”
For public institutions like Nashville Public Library, the benefits of EVO make funding decisions simple. EVO and the included EVO suite of workflow tools are available without any per-seat license fees, so there is no additional software cost as a team grows. Plus, EVO media production servers are manufactured in the USA within the guidelines of TAA compliance, and are trusted by thousands of public, private, and government institutions around the world.
“Everyone I talked to about EVO had glowing reviews, especially about the support. Knowing that so many other public institutions had positive experiences with EVO made me even more confident in my decision.”
How It’s Going (and Going, and Going)
Eight years later, Jirik has become a vocal advocate of the EVO shared storage solution, frequently sharing his own rave reviews about his team’s shared media storage infrastructure.
“We’re sitting with an uptime of 302 weeks, 4 days, 4 hours, and 59 minutes… and counting,” announced Jirik with pride.
He continued, “my favorite part about EVO is that it is maintenance-free. Once I racked it, the EVO just sat there and ran. We haven’t had to get support involved for hardware at all. And I never hear anything about it, so EVO is doing its job exactly as planned.”
“The training we received was very clear and helpful as well,” he added. “SNS made it easy to learn so we could start using the tools right away.”
Better for the Whole Team
Jirik is clearly a fan, but perhaps nobody at Nashville Public Library benefits from EVO more than Audio/Video Technician Forrest Eagle. He uses EVO every day to store, edit, and collaborate on a variety of audio and video productions for the library.
“With our old server, I had to download media at the beginning of the day, then painstakingly upload everything back to the storage server overnight,” said Eagle. “With EVO’s data transfer speed, I can edit directly from the server in real-time without interrupting my work.”
Eagle continued, “It has made me so much more productive, and I’m not worried about taking up space on either of my workstations. Honestly, I didn’t even know it was possible to edit straight from the server, and now I can’t imagine going back.”
Easy Amazon S3 Backups
With big plans for the video production department’s future, Nashville Public Library recently invested in a second EVO server to expand their storage capacity and further enhance their video and podcast production workflow.
“If you look at the track record of the existing unit, it was a no-brainer to get another EVO,” Jirik said. “Especially with the new tools that SNS has come out with like ShareBrowser, Nomad, and the Amazon S3 backup.”
A big proponent of the cloud for media backup, Jirik automatically backs up his EVO’s media to an Amazon S3 bucket each night with Slingshot—EVO’s included automations engine and API.
“I’ve used Amazon S3 for years,” he said. “With my other storage products, it’s somewhat of a challenge at times to get that Amazon S3 backup to go. When I set the S3 cloud backup on EVO, it was seamless. It’s probably the easiest S3 backup I’ve had to do.”
Staying Organized with ShareBrowser
No shame on the Dewey Decimal System, but Nashville Public Library’s video editors have a better way to organize media files with ShareBrowser, EVO’s powerful media asset management software.
ShareBrowser offers easy-to-use search, preview, tag, comment, and bin sharing features for collaborators using a variety of audio and video editing software, including Nashville Public Library’s creative apps of choice: Adobe Premiere Pro and Pro Tools.
“The recursive tagging in ShareBrowser is huge,” Eagle said of his favorite ShareBrowser feature. “We are migrating a lot of content and constantly receiving uploads from various branches to our Dropbox account. Being able to upload that footage to EVO, then recursively tag entire folders and all of the content within them is a big time-saver.”
In addition to the millions of books on their storied shelves, countless digital audio and video files on EVO help Nashville Public Library serve their fast-growing population with incredible learning experiences each day.
To learn more about the powerful and reliable EVO shared storage system and the included EVO suite of software tools, schedule a demo today.