DAMS in Cultural Heritage Institutions

Transcription

1 DAMS in Cultural Heritage Institutions Rose Ingerman Fall 2016

2 1 Table of Contents Introduction What is Digital Asset Management? What are DAMS? How Can Museums Use DAMS? Some Different Kinds of DAMS Conclusion Bibliography

3 2 Introduction Before computers, cataloging and registration in cultural heritage institutions was a rather tedious task. Information about each and every item in a museum s collection had to be cataloged by hand, and physical copies of these records not only had to be stored, but also maintained and collected. However, since the widespread use of computers (starting in the 1960s), museums and other cultural heritage institutions have utilized various computer programs to aid them in the management of their collections. The most commonly used type of program is a collection management system (CMS). A collection management system does exactly what it sounds like- it aids a museum in the management of information about the objects in their collection. Naturally, as time has marched ever forward and cultural heritage institutions have gained more and more of a presence online, they have begun

4 3 extensive projects to photograph, scan, and digitize the items in their collections both for posterity, and to make images of these objects available to the public. In some cases, especially with larger institutions, this means the creation of tens or hundreds of thousands of images that need to not only be organized and stored, but also posted to various websites and other services that allow the images to be viewed. This is where Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Digital Asset Management Systems (DAMS) come in!

5 4 What is Digital Asset Management? What are DAMS? Digital Asset Management is, quite simply, the organization, storage, cataloging, retrieval, maintaining, preservation and distribution of digital assets. Perhaps the better is: What are digital assets? Digital assets can be many things- images, video, audio- the key is that they are digital, in both their essence/existence, and in the way they are stored.. A Digital Asset Management system is a program or software that easily allows for the aforementioned aspects of DAM. For any institution, good organization of digital assets is imperative in being able to use and access them in the first place; after all, what good are files if they are so confusing and disorganized that they can t be used? DAMS generally not only organize digital assets, but also the metadata assigned to those assets. In the case of museums, this often includes both metadata about the object being represented in a digital asset (generally a digital photo or scan), and

6 5 metadata about the digital asset itself (who captured the image, how it was captured, file size, date captured and more). In addition to organization, storage, maintenance and retrieval of digital assets, DAMS can be used to feed these images and their metadata into a cultural heritage institution s website or online database.

7 6 How Can Museums Use DAMS? Consider this: a museum has a particular painting in its collection- lets say a work by Vermeer. Their CMS contains all the metadata anyone would want to know about the work. Then, the museum embarks on a mission to photograph and digitize every individual item in its collection-from the lowliest archival document to the greatest masterpieces in its possession. Once all these images are captured what is the museum to do with them? How will they be accessed by museum employees? By the public? How will they get on the website? That's where a DAMS comes in! Each and every one of those photographs is a digital asset; the photograph taken of the Vermeer painting (along with all the others) can be inputted into the DAMS (along with any and all metadata) so that the image of the work, and the information regarding the work, can be connected and accessible.

8 7 You may be asking yourself, why would a cultural heritage institution want to use DAMS if they already have a CMS? Couldn t a CMS serve the same purpose as a DAMS? This answer to this question is both yes and no. CMS are, generally speaking, not equipt to handle and manage actual digital assets (those being, in a museum s case, images and some video). They simply exist to manage the metadata and actual information about a particular object. A DAMS not only manages the data about the object, but also the data about the digital asset, and the digital asset itself. DAMS are not necessarily programs specifically designed for cultural heritage institutions, so there are certainly problems a museum might face in eliminating their CMS entirely. For example, there are some museum procedures that a CMS might track, like loans of objects from the collection, that DAMS simply do not have proper workflow capabilities to deal with. However, as use of DAMS in cultural heritage institutions grows, their abilities will grow and develop to be more aligned with a museum s needs.

9 8 Different Kinds of DAMS DAMS consist of both software (the actual program) and hardware (the physical thing that stores all of the digital asset data, like a server). They can be proprietary or open sourced, allowing users to make changes to the code as they wish to, or see fit. Some proprietary DAMS include Northplains Xinet (used by institutions like the Frick Collection), Luna Imaging (used by The Brooklyn Museum), and Extensis (used by the Portland Museum of Art). For a smaller institution that might not have the funding to pay for a large proprietary DAMS, open source options could be an excellent choice. Along with the obvious benefit of often being free of cost, they offer flexibility. Some open source DAMS include EnterMedia, Notre DAM, and Phraseanet. As more and more cultural heritage institutions choose to implements DAMS, many vendors are providing more and more resources in their software that might be helpful for use in a museum, like offering metadata templates for common schemas used in cultural heritage (i.e. VRA Core).

10 9 Conclusion Despite the fact that DAMS are not designed specifically for use in museums and cultural heritage institutions, their usefulness in such places is enormous. They make the daunting task of managing digital images and scans of a museum s collection far simpler. Along with a museum s CMS, they can provide clear and comprehensive access to an institution s collection, which makes employees jobs much easier. Additionally, DAMS allows museums to make images of their collection (and information about it) available to the public with far greater frequency and ease than ever before, thus allowing them to fulfill one of their primary purposes: facilitation of a connection between the public and their collections.

11 10 Bibliography CMS and DAMS: Working Together for Heritage and Culture. Retrieved November 27th, 2016, from stems-for-collections-management/ DAM Helps Museums Achieve Mission and Purpose. Retrieved November 27th, 2016, from hieve-mission-purpose/ DAM and Museums- An Introduction. Retrieved November 27th, 2016, from Open Source DAM. Retrieved November 27th, 2016, from Luna Software. Retrieved November 27th, 2016, from So What s A DAMS and Why Do We Need One? Retrieved November 27th, 2016 from -a-dams-and-why-do-we-need-one/ With DAM, Do Museums Still Need Content Management Systems? Retrieved November 27th, 2016, from lections-management-systems Xinet. Retrieved November 27th, 2016, from