Every month, iseemedia features how one of our partners is utilizing iseemedia technology to create rich media content or deliver innovative imaging and technology solutions.

The World's Largest Online Library

Questia Media America, Inc. has selected iseemedia Zoom Image Server for delivering high-resolution, interactive 2D images for their online library. Questia's online library of books, journals, magazines, newspaper, and encyclopedia articles feature more than fifteen million pages of text and almost two million images. iseemedia's Zoom Image Server is responsible for managing and delivering images in Questia's library to patrons 24 hours a day, seven days a week through Questia's online service.

"iseemedia's Zoom Image Server gives our library patrons the ability to view our illustrations, maps, and pictures, and experience even greater detail when using the zoom and pan functionality than if they were reading the actual book," said Jim Hallers, Questia's Vice President of Technical Operations. "The iseemedia Zoom Image Server on Sun hardware running the Solaris operating environment has proven itself to be a robust and reliable part of Questia's technical infrastructure."

"This site is a testament to how the Zoom Image Server solution can enhance the online e-learning experience," said Anthony DeCristofaro, iseemedia President & CEO. "We are very excited that Questia has selected our Enterprise solution for their imaging needs."

Questia is the first online library that provides 24/7 access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and newspaper articles. You can search each and every word of all of the books and journal articles in the collection. You can read every title cover to cover. This rich, scholarly content -- selected by professional collection development librarians -- is not available elsewhere on the Internet. Undergraduate, high school, graduate students, and Internet users of all ages have found Questia to be an invaluable online resource. Anyone doing research or just interested in topics that touch on the humanities and social sciences will find titles of interest in Questia.

Based in Houston, Questia is delivering on the true promise of the Internet by providing access to a wealth of human knowledge. Visit www.questia.com for more information.

Questia User Study

www.questia.com

Questia Overview:

Questia, based in Houston, Texas is the first website that provides 24/7 access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and newspaper articles. This rich, scholarly content -- selected by professional collection development librarians -- is not available elsewhere on the Internet. Undergraduate, high school, graduate students, and Internet users of all ages have found Questia to be an invaluable online resource. Questia provides a comprehensive research environment to meet students' academic needs with more than 45,000 books (13.5 million pages), 360,000 articles (1.5 million pages), and almost 2 million images available for viewing.

The Challenge:

Questia was looking to offer added value and additional features to their library members. Adding interactive zoom and pan functionality to almost 2 million static images was the goal. It was very important that this feature be offered without any plug-in downloads and be accessible to low bandwidth users. Furthermore, with over 100,000 unique visitors per day during the school year Questia needed an Enterprise Solution that could handle this load.

Solution:

Upon investigation of the Image Server marketplace, and testing various Image Server solutions, Questia selected the iseemedia Zoom Image Server which provided the most bandwidth efficient, scalable, and plug-in less solution available in the market. The Universal Viewer, which works with any web browser and requires no client-side installation was chosen as the client viewer.

Results:

• Installation of the Zoom Image Server for the production environment completed within a few hours
• Enriched media experience for Questia monthly subscribers
• Robust, scalable solution that can handle Enterprise level traffic patterns

Key Technologies:

• iseemedia Zoom Image Server Enterprise Edition
• Sun E220 Hardware (1GB RAM; 2CPU)
• Sun Solaris 8 Operating System
• iseemedia Universal Viewer

The Bottom Line:

"iseemedia's Zoom Image Server solution allows our users to instantly enhance their online learning experience by being able to zoom and pan the subject image materials that they are researching. The product was easy to integrate into our infrastructure and we are very pleased with it's performance in meeting our web traffic demands." Jim Hallers - VP Technical Operations, Questia Media