Guest Blog by Louis King, Digital Information Architect, Yale University, Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure.
In an earlier post, John Price from Open Text raised an interesting discussion about provenance and how a record of ownership might play out in the complex creative world of digital works and derivatives. This is an important aspect of Digital Asset Management and one that also relates back to the provenance of the original physical objects in museum collections. These objects and data about them including provenance, descriptions, acquisition histories, conservation treatments, exhibition history, and much more are generally tracked in Collection Management Systems. How then should we parse this information across systems and how will we know which system is the authoritative source of data?
In this year’s SPNHC (pronounce Spinach) meeting hosted by Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University will present how a collaborative effort among Yale’s Museums, Libraries and Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure has lead to the development of a shared digital content infrastructure that provides a common platform for working with digital content while interoperating with other specialized systems. Digital Asset Management is a key component and works in concert with cross collection discovery, persistent linking, content delivery and preservation services (see ODAI Digital Content Infrastructure) to provide a cohesive and comprehensive platform.
In today’s complex environments a DAM system must interoperate with other systems to provide a comprehensive environment that supports the full spectrum of professional and disciplinary practices. Each system has its own specialty and provides unique functionality. In Yale’s environment, Media Manager 7, the DAM, is responsible to provide the “heavy lifting of digital media” for the entire enterprise–ingest, storage management, indexing and discovery, metadata services, workflow support, fine-grained access control, export and distribution, media conversion and transcoding and media streaming. Media Manager has also been extended, through its APIs, to interoperate with shared systems listed earlier and specialized systems, such as Collection Management Systems, Content Management Systems, Course Management Systems and research tools.
Together, these systems support Museum practice in collection management extending from the physical object to the digital representations of that object. Together these systems provide a digital content platform for scholarship in the digital age.
