Category: Digital Asset Management Systems

"When a Repository Is Not Enough: Redesigning a Digital Ecosystem to Serve Scholarly Communication"

Robin R. Sewell et al. have published "When a Repository Is Not Enough: Redesigning a Digital Ecosystem to Serve Scholarly Communication" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION Our library's digital asset management system (DAMS) was no longer meeting digital asset management requirements or expanding scholarly communication needs. We formed a multiunit task force (TF) to (1) survey and identify existing and emerging institutional needs; (2) research available DAMS (open source and proprietary) and assess their potential fit; and (3) deploy software locally for in-depth testing and evaluation. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM We winnowed a field of 25 potential DAMS down to 5 for deployment and evaluation. The process included selection and identification of test collections and the creation of a multipart task based rubric based on library and campus needs assessments. Time constraints and DAMS deployment limitations prompted a move toward a new evaluation iteration: a shorter criteria-based rubric. LESSONS LEARNED We discovered that no single DAMS was "just right," nor was any single DAMS a static product. Changing and expanding scholarly communication and digital needs could only be met by the more flexible approach offered by a multicomponent digital asset management ecosystem (DAME), described in this study. We encountered obstacles related to testing complex, rapidly evolving software available in a range of configurations and flavors (including tiers of vendor-hosted functionality) and time and capacity constraints curtailed in-depth testing. While we anticipate long-term benefits from "going further together" by including university-wide representation in the task force, there were trade-offs in distributing responsibilities and diffusing priorities. NEXT STEPS Shifts in scholarly communication at multiple levels—institutional, regional, consortial, national, and international—have already necessitated continual review and adjustment of our digital systems.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"HydraDAM2: Extending Fedora 4 and Hydra for Media Preservation"

Jon W. Dunn et al. have self-archived "HydraDAM2: Extending Fedora 4 and Hydra for Media Preservation."

Here's an excerpt:

The overarching goal of the HydraDAM2 project, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access Research and Development program, was to extend the existing HydraDAM digital asset management system, developed with prior NEH support, to be able to serve as a digital preservation repository for time-based media collections implementable at a wide range of institutions using multiple digital storage strategies. The new open source digital preservation repository system developed as part of the project by partners Indiana University (IU) and WGBH, known as Phydo, is based on the Fedora 4.x digital repository system and Samvera (formerly Hydra) repository application development framework and is intended to support storage and long-term preservation management of audio and video files and their accompanying metadata. This white paper describes the work of the HydraDAM2 project to develop the Phydo system, along with future plans.

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Omeka Curator Dashboard"

Jess Waggoner has published "Omeka Curator Dashboard" in the Omeka blog.

Here's an excerpt:

The Omeka Curator Dashboard (or "the OCD" as we endearingly refer to it) is a suite of fifteen plugins (though a bonus sixteenth will be coming soon!) designed to facilitate object import and export, manage metadata, and curate collections. Several of our plugins are already available on the official list of Omeka plugins. The others are still undergoing testing, but can be downloaded from the UCSC Library GitHub in the meanwhile. We are actively soliciting feedback on these plugins from the Omeka user community so we can continue to improve their features and interfaces.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Omeka 2.0 Released

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has released Omeka 2.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The most important improvement is a completely revamped admin interface, which includes many features to improve workflow and make it easier to build your sites. The search functionality is also dramatically improved, and covers much more of the content in the sites. . . .

Omeka users will notice improvements right away with an upgrade to 2.0 or the launch a new installation. For example, site administrators have much better tools to build custom site navigation without having to hack around in the code (Check for "Navigation" under the Appearance settings.) Also, you'll notice major improvements in file handling. Now you can reorder item files, and the system produces derivatives (thumbnails, etc.) from a much wider array of file types, not just image files.

| Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 2 | Digital Scholarship |

Scholars’ Lab Releases BagIt and SolrSearch Plugins for Omeka

The Scholars' Lab has Released BagIt and SolrSearch Plugins for Omeka.

Here's an excerpt from the BagIt announcement:

BagIt is a specification by the Library of Congress for creating containers of files with metadata. . . .

The first part of this release is the BagIt PHP library. This is a generic PHP library for working with BagIt files. . . .

The second part is the BagIt Omeka plugin. This is built upon the BagIt library and provides an easy-to-use user interface for it.

Here's an excerpt from the SolrSearch announcement:

SolrSearch allows you to replace Omeka's default search with Solr. Solr is a standard, popular, open source, fast text search engine server. It handles hit highlighting, date math, numeric aggregation functions (mean, max, etc.), indexing for 33 languages, replication, and many, many more things.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog | Digital Scholarship |

CONTENTdm Cookbook: Recipes for Metadata Entry for UofL Digital Initiatives

Rachel Howard of the University of Louisville Libraries' Special Collections department has released the CONTENTdm Cookbook: Recipes for Metadata Entry for UofL Digital Initiatives.

Here's an excerpt:

This document is intended as a guide to data entry and descriptive cataloging for University of Louisville (UofL) digital projects using CONTENTdm software. It will be updated as modifications in the software and/or metadata schema necessitate. CONTENTdm’s metadata is based on the Dublin Core Metadata Schema. A UofL Metadata Working Group drafted initial guidelines based on The Collaborative Digitization Program (CDP)’s Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices, which was further refined by the CONTENTdm Metadata Working Group’s Best Practices for CONTENTdm and other OAI-PMH compliant repositories creating shareable metadata (http://www.oclc.org/gateway/support/best_practices.pdf).

As we began to work with CONTENTdm, we felt it necessary to adjust CDP’s recommendations to accommodate the capabilities, limitations, and additional field properties presented by the software. We also modified some of the field labels to make more sense to the end-user, and put the fields in an order that highlighted the descriptive metadata at the top of the record and relegated the more administrative and technical information at the bottom.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Omeka 1.2 Released

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has released Omeka 1.2.

Here's an excerpt from the download page

Omeka version 1.2 includes following features and plug-ins:

  • Four themes that are easy to adapt with simple CSS changes and theme configuration
  • Exhibit Builder plugin with 12 page layouts and 5 exhibit themes
  • Tagging for items and exhibits
  • RSS feeds for items
  • COinS plug-in making items readable by Zotero
  • SimplePages plugin for easily making static pages

Here's a brief description of Omeka from Omeka: Serious Web Publishing.

Omeka is a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions. Its "five-minute setup" makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Omeka is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites to foster user interaction and participation. It makes top-shelf design easy with a simple and flexible templating system. Its robust open-source developer and user communities underwrite Omeka’s stability and sustainability.

Read more about it at "Configurable Themes in 1.2."

CONTENTdm Version 5.2 Released

OCLC has released CONTENTdm version 5.2.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

With the new release, the CONTENTdm Project Client now supports auto updates, enabling users to get updates as quickly as they are available. It automatically checks for software updates in the background, so work is not interrupted. If updates are available, they are downloaded but not installed until the organization is ready.

To better support text-based collections, PDF print quality can now be specified in the Project Client, enabling users to select a quality level when generating optional print versions of their compound objects. For users with large, full-text collections, several enhancements improve performance and reduce indexing times. Other enhancements include the addition of a new thesaurus, Canadian Subject Headings (CSH), and configuration options to filter hits in Usage Reports.

Omeka 1.1 Released

Version 1.1 of Omeka has been released. Omeka is a "free and open source collections based web-based publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators, and cultural enthusiasts."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In 1.1., users will have more control over their installation through the admin interface, such as:

  • Toggling more easily between the public site and the item and collection pages by clicking on a new "View on Public Site" link;
  • Browsing through more than 10 collections;
  • Managing and upgrading plugins;
  • Displaying only item fields containing metadata on the public site with a new setting in the theme panel (without needing to edit on the server).

Read more about it at "Release Notes for 1.1."

CONTENTdm Image Viewer: dmMonocle 1.0 Released

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries have released dmMonocle 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the project page:

dmMonocle is a stand-alone image viewer for CONTENTdm® collections, intended as a replacement for the default image viewer provided with CONTENTdm® 4.x and 5.x. The goal of the project is to make CONTENTdm® images, such as photos, maps, and scanned documents, easier to view and navigate. dmMonocle is written in JavaScript using jQuery, and provides patrons with the ability to zoom, pan, and rotate images on the fly without reloading the entire page. dmMonocle slices up large images into smaller square tiles, loading only the tiles in the visible area, much like Google Maps. In addition to the improved main viewing area, dmMonocle provides a thumbnail-sized navigator, showing patrons which part of the larger image they are viewing. The navigator may also be used to quickly move around an image

"Systems for Managing Digital Media Collections"

JISC Digital Media has released "Systems for Managing Digital Media Collections."

Here's an excerpt :

Everyone's collection and context is unique, so your choice of a system (or systems) for managing your media will require a careful assessment of your needs and resources and an evaluation of the available options. This paper provides an overview of a number of different approaches to digital media management: from some very cheap and 'low-tech' approaches to much more complex and specialised solutions. Another paper in this series discusses some of the commonly available functionality in more detail and raises some key questions to consider when choosing a system . . .

We have given more than thirty examples of systems below, with links to further descriptions on JISC Digital Media's website or to external sites. These examples are not meant to be exhaustive or to imply any sort of endorsement or criticism: they are offered for information purposes only. This is a competitive and fast-changing environment, in which new versions are pushed out, new systems emerge, and last year's cutting-edge features become standard issue.

OCLC Releases WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway

OCLC has released the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway for CONTENTdm sites.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is available to all users of OCLC CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management software at no additional charge.

The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway offers libraries a self-service tool to easily upload metadata from their unique digital content to WorldCat, the world's largest online resource for finding items held in libraries. Once the metadata is in WorldCat, libraries' digital collections are more visible and discoverable by Web searchers through WorldCat.org, WorldCat Local (including the ‘quick start’ version), Google, Yahoo! and other popular search engines.

"Libraries, museums and archives should do whatever they can to get their materials available online and expose their collections to users—wherever they are—on the Web,” said Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research. "The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is an easy and effective way to do this."

The Gateway has been piloted in 12 institutions. Since May, the pilot participants used the Gateway self-service tools to upload thousands of records from their CONTENTdm collections into WorldCat. Because they have used the Gateway to set up profiles for their collections, the pilot users' metadata will be regularly uploaded to WorldCat as they add to their digital collections over time.

EmeraldView Front-End to Greenstone Digital Library Software

A beta release of the EmeraldView front-end to the Greenstone digital library software is near completion. The current code is available via a Subversion checkout. A demo is available.

Here's an excerpt from the project home page:

We are aiming to solve several key weaknesses of the stock front-end:

  • Greenstone's cryptic URLs of unusual size are a fail for user comprehensibility, search engine crawlers, bookmarking, etc. . .
  • Though extensive customization of the display is possible, there are some stopping points where modification of the C++ source is required.
  • The customization that is supported is via a system of micro-templates referred to as macros. This system is so heavily nested and cross-referenced that it is very difficult to conceptualize how any given page is generated.

Digital Exhibit Software: Omeka 1.0

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has released Omeka 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This production-grade release marks the completion of Omeka’s basic requirement set. Maintaining our commitment to serious web publishing for scholarship and cultural heritage, Omeka 1.0 incorporates unqualified Dublin Core metadata for organizing and displaying collections; support for extensible element sets; robust, flexible theme and plugin APIs; and plugins for Zotero compatibility, static page creation, and building sophisticated online exhibitions.

Open Source Biological Specimen Database System for Museums: Specify 6 Released

Specify 6, an open source biological specimen database system for museums, has been released. (Thanks to Peter Scott’s Library Blog.)

Here's an excerpt from the project home page:

After more than twelve developer years of design and engineering and over two million USD of investment, the Specify Software Team is delighted to release today, April 10, 2009, Specify 6 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux desktops.

Specify is a client-server database platform for museums and herbaria which processes specimen information for computerizing holdings, managing collection management transactions, and for mobilizing species occurrence data to the web. Specify is free and open source software licensed under the GNU GPL2. Downloadable installation packages for all three desktop flavors as well as Specify's Java source code are linked to this site. . . .

Non-profit U.S. research collections are eligible for our helpdesk and data conversion services thanks to our financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Biological Infrastructure. We look forward to working with you to increase the research impact of your institution's investment in biodiversity collection curation and specimen data management.

Digital Archiving of Audio Content Using WINISIS and Greenstone Software: A Manual for Community Radio Managers

UNESCO has released Digital Archiving of Audio Content Using WINISIS and Greenstone Software: A Manual for Community Radio Managers.

Here's an excerpt:

This self-instructional Manual describes:

  1. the method of creation of digital archive with WINISIS software,
  2. the creation of a web front-end for the above archives to make it easily usable and accessible over a local area network with GenIsisWeb software,
  3. the creation of a CD-ROM library with WINISIS and GenIsisCD software,
  4. the creation of a digital library of audio documents with Greenstone digital library software. . . .

The mechanisms described in this Manual can be used for managing not only audio documents, but also other types of digital documents such as text, PDF, HTML and video.

Digital Collection/Repository Software: OCLC Releases CONTENTdm 5

OCLC has released CONTENTdm 5. In addition to being used as a digital asset management system, CONTENTdm is being increasingly being used to support institutional repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

OCLC has released CONTENTdm 5, a new version of the popular CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management software that fully supports Unicode, the industry standard used to recognize text in most of the world's non-Western languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek and Hebrew, among others. . . .

For end users, CONTENTdm 5 provides a new experience with powerful search improvements, including the integration of Find—the search engine behind OCLC's WorldCat.org. Offering capabilities beyond full Unicode searching, CONTENTdm 5 also features faceted browsing to help refine search results, as well as relevancy ranking similar to what end users experience when searching WorldCat.org and other popular search engines. These improvements ensure a library achieves its ultimate goal for its digital collection—to help end users find, get and use the digital items they need.

For libraries, the new CONTENTdm includes a totally redesigned Project Client, offering more streamlined collection-building workflows that will reduce the time needed to create a digital collection, reducing project costs and maximizing results.

Other CONTENTdm 5 enhancements include a new reports module designed to better track and assess collection usage; nine integrated thesauri, which will improve efficiency by providing controlled vocabularies; and increased capacity that supports more collections, items and metadata fields as well as larger volumes for batch processing.

CONTENTdm 5 offers improvements for handling EAD (Encoded Archival Description) files, including how finding aids are imported, displayed and searched.

Digital Library Software: Greenstone Version 2.81 Released

Version 2.81 of the Greenstone digital library software has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the home page that describes Greenstone:

Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

See the Greenstone Fact Sheet for a more detailed description of the system.

OpenCollection Version 0.54-3 Released

OpenCollection version 0.54-3 has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the Overview page:

OpenCollection is a full-featured collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections. It is designed to handle large, heterogeneous collections that have complex cataloguing requirements and require support for a variety of metadata standards and media formats. Unlike most other collections management applications, OpenCollection is completely web-based. All cataloging, search and administrative functions are accessed using common web-browser software, untying users from specific operating systems and making cataloguing by distributed teams and online access to collections information simple, efficient and inexpensive.

See the Features page for more details about this open source software.

New CONTENTdm Add-on: OCLC Web Harvester

OCLC has announced the availability of Web Harvester, which allows CONTENTdm sites to import Web content into their systems.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

OCLC's Web Harvester evolved from collaboration with several state libraries, state archives and universities over a period of seven years. Participants emphasized the increasing importance of collecting and managing Web-based content as information resources move online yet remain within libraries' and archives' collection scopes.

The Web Harvester is integrated into library workflows, allowing library staff to capture content as part of the cataloging process. The captured content is then sent to the organization's digital collections where it can be managed with other CONTENTdm digital content. . . .

The Web Harvester is accessed via the Connexion client, OCLC's powerful cataloging service, and captures content ranging from single, Web-based documents to entire Web sites. Once retrieved, users can review the captured Web content and add it to a collection managed by OCLC's CONTENTdm software, a complete solution for storing, managing and delivering a library's digital collections to the Web. Once in CONTENTdm, then Web content can be accessed and managed in conjunction with other digital collections. Harvested items are discoverable from WorldCat.org, WorldCat Local and the CONTENTdm Web interface.

For additional security, master files of the captured content also can be ingested to the OCLC Digital Archive, the service for long-term storage of originals and master files from libraries' digital collections.

Omeka Version 0.9.2 Released

Version 0.9.2 of Omeka has been released. This is a bug fix release.

Here's an excerpt from the About page that describes Omeka:

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. It is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content rather than programming.

OCLC Announces Digital Archive Service

OCLC has announced the availability of a Digital Archive service.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The service provides a secure storage environment for libraries to easily manage and monitor master files and digital originals. The importance of preserving master files grows as a library's digital collections grow. Libraries need a workflow for capturing and managing master files that finds a balance between the acquisition of both digitized and born-digital content while not outpacing a library's capability to manage these large files. . . .

The Digital Archive service is a specially designed system in a controlled operating environment dedicated to the ongoing managed storage of digital content. OCLC has developed specific systems processes and procedures for the service tuned to the management of data for the long term.

From the time content arrives, the Digital Archive systems begin inspecting it to ensure continuity. OCLC systems perform quality checks and record the results in a "health record" for each file. Automated systems revisit these quality checks periodically so libraries receive up-to-date reports on the health of the collection. OCLC provides monthly updated information for all collections on the personal archive report portal.

For users of CONTENTdm, OCLC's digital collection management software for libraries and other cultural heritage institutions, the Digital Archive service is an optional capability integrated with various workflows for building collections. Master files are secured for ingest to the Digital Archive service using the CONTENTdm Acquisition Station, the Connexion digital import capability and the Web Harvesting service.

For users of other content management systems, the Digital Archive service provides a low-overhead mechanism for safely storing master files.