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www.worldcat.org/...file1650.html - Cached - Annotated View

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kgerber
Kgerber bookmarked on 2009-11-04 digital asset management software museums digital collections management

Article discussing the use of DAMS in museums in three parts. Edited by Gunter Waibel.

  • Met’s commitment to asking and answering a series of questions not always built into the development process for digital asset management activities in the not-for-profit world. Our questions included quantitative ones such as: “How big is the collection of assets?” and “How much storage will be required?”  We asked questions about proprietorship and access: “Who uses the assets?” and “Who will manage them?”  We wondered about the quality and value of the assets: “Should images that are made available to the public be color corrected?” and “If the object’s descriptive record has not been reviewed, may it be distributed along with the asset?” and finally, “Are existing descriptions adequate to support successful searching at all?”  We also asked a number of questions that forced the Met’s staff and executives to think through fundamental intellectual property policy positions: “Who decides who may use the assets, both inside and outside of the museum?” and “Is the Met’s goal to profit from the licensing of images, or to support an educational mandate for broad distribution?”  All of these questions needed to be considered in light of a process that would, inevitably, seek to automate the answers. Processes and policies that had heretofore been entrusted to individuals within the organization would need to be formalized so that a system might manage them; decisions that had been made on an ad hoc basis now needed to be seen as patterns that formed policies. And as we found answers to our questions, the scope of the project inevitably grew.
    • kgerber
      Kgerber on 2009-11-04
      Make sure we ask these questions that non-profits don't always ask in development. Last couple of sentences is crucial to understand because an automated process is hard to overcome once it is established.
  • Despite the shift from a return-on-investment to a mission-driven rationale, the project retained its inventory and cataloguing elements, building into each phase activities intended to develop additional inventory and enhance cataloguing. The decision to maintain this emphasis on content development has helped the project to achieve widespread support throughout the institution.
  • Once the files and data were copied, we began the process of normalizing the Excel sheets and evaluating the usefulness of the files. A significant amount of work was done to massage the data and files to ready them for ingest into the digital asset management system. And, although the assets have now been ingested, a great deal of cataloguing work remains before the assets will be catalogued to a level that will support reliable access and use by the public.
    • kgerber
      Kgerber on 2009-11-04
      Also points out the necessity for cataloging work
    • kgerber
      Kgerber on 2009-11-04
      Shows how Excel is used as a holder of metadata for other organizations using digital asset management software.
  • For most institutions, implementing a digital asset management system signals a decision to begin storing larger files on the network in order to improve access to files that have traditionally been stored on less accessible and less secure media such as optical discs or external hard drives. The storage implications of a digital asset management solution can be significant. At the Met, we moved from a storage capacity of about seven terabytes of data on our entire network, to a capacity of 60 terabytes—expected to be adequate for about two years. While our storage needs are greater than those of most art museums, even at a small- to medium-sized organization the prospect of needing to increase storage on this scale in a short time can be sobering. 
    • kgerber
      Kgerber on 2009-11-04
      Example of how storage needs go up when a access to larger files on network is facilitated by DAMS
  • Cataloguing information about assets related to works of art is different from cataloguing information about sneakers or pickup trucks. The permanent and archival nature of our digital asset collections may require different functionality and data structures than those offered by most large commercial digital asset management vendors.
    • kgerber
      Kgerber on 2009-11-04
      Metadata needs for cultural heritage institutions are very different than the traditional customers of commercial DAMS. The vendors are new to this market even in 2009.

This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 04 Nov 2009, by Kent Gerber.

  • 04 Nov 09
    kgerber
    Kent Gerber

    Article discussing the use of DAMS in museums in three parts. Edited by Gunter Waibel.

    digital asset management software museums digital collections management

    • Met’s commitment to asking and answering a series of questions not always built into the development process for digital asset management activities in the not-for-profit world. Our questions included quantitative ones such as: “How big is the collection of assets?” and “How much storage will be required?”  We asked questions about proprietorship and access: “Who uses the assets?” and “Who will manage them?”  We wondered about the quality and value of the assets: “Should images that are made available to the public be color corrected?” and “If the object’s descriptive record has not been reviewed, may it be distributed along with the asset?” and finally, “Are existing descriptions adequate to support successful searching at all?”  We also asked a number of questions that forced the Met’s staff and executives to think through fundamental intellectual property policy positions: “Who decides who may use the assets, both inside and outside of the museum?” and “Is the Met’s goal to profit from the licensing of images, or to support an educational mandate for broad distribution?”  All of these questions needed to be considered in light of a process that would, inevitably, seek to automate the answers. Processes and policies that had heretofore been entrusted to individuals within the organization would need to be formalized so that a system might manage them; decisions that had been made on an ad hoc basis now needed to be seen as patterns that formed policies. And as we found answers to our questions, the scope of the project inevitably grew.
      • Kent Gerber

        Kent Gerber on 2009-11-04

        Make sure we ask these questions that non-profits don't always ask in development. Last couple of sentences is crucial to understand because an automated process is hard to overcome once it is established.

    • Despite the shift from a return-on-investment to a mission-driven rationale, the project retained its inventory and cataloguing elements, building into each phase activities intended to develop additional inventory and enhance cataloguing. The decision to maintain this emphasis on content development has helped the project to achieve widespread support throughout the institution.
    • 3 more annotations...

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