Acquia and Razorfish today welcome the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) to Drupal and the Acquia Platform, led by APAC partner Razorfish, as part of the govCMS program.

The NFSA collects, preserves and shares Australia’s audiovisual history. Digital technology plays a vital role in its ‘sharing’ function, and creates unprecedented opportunities to render the vast NFSA’s collection even more discoverable and accessible to all Australians.      Please see the table below for an Experience Menu of launch curated collections available from November 14.

Razorfish, in partnership with Acquia, was tasked with helping NFSA realise its strategic vision of digital leadership in the cultural sector. The first step in this ambitious project is the redesign and relaunch of the NFSA website to provide a platform for contemporary and future audiences to discover and explore more than 100 years of film, television, radio, music, etc.

As a Government agency, the NFSA had access to the govCMS program: an open source web content management system hosted on the public cloud using Drupal. Agencies using govCMS are able to create and manage unclassified websites cost effectively, in compliance with Australian government standards. The govCMS service is managed by the Department of Finance.

This significant public asset aims to engage a broader audience, and facilitate content discovery. As part of this, the NFSA and Razorfish have:

• Undertaken a complete review and redesign of the website navigation and information architecture to create a more engaging and ‘discoverable’ user experience.
• Facilitated the discovery and creative reuse of rich assets within the collection by placing them higher in the hierarchy of the website
• Created a curation platform for the 2.3 million assets within the collection, allowing them to be grouped together in curated ‘showcase’ experiences.

“We are very excited to introduce the new NFSA website. Not only can the public enjoy exploring our curated collections and online exhibitions, but for us, this platform is an essential tool to share our collection in an increasingly connected audiovisual world.

“Working with Razorfish and Acquia has allowed us to create a world-class experience that we hope will be enjoyed by our audience and stakeholders,” said Michael Loebenstein, NFSA CEO.

“We’re proud to have worked in partnership with the NFSA and Acquia to deliver the most user-centric and creatively excellent website using the govCMS platform to date. It’s been a privilege for Razorfish to engage with an institution as important to Australia’s culture and heritage as the NFSA,” added Simon Pelletier, managing director, Razorfish.

“This is such a transformational piece of work, and the website now really articulates and executes the organisation’s purpose and goals.”

“NFSA’s new site demonstrates the versatility of govCMS for building elegant, media rich, and highly intuitive sites, and the archive gains the benefits of an accessible, scalable platform from which to develop creative, digital leadership.

“Working with Razorfish, we’ve developed a platform where the public may begin exploring the history contained in the archive and discover how it relates to today,” concluded Graham Sowden, GM for Acquia Asia Pacific and Japan.