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Volume 9 (2020-21)
Each volume of Journal of Digital Media Management consists of four 100-page issues published in both print and online.
The Articles published in Volume 9 include:
Volume 9 Number 4
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Editorial
Simon Beckett, Publisher -
Papers
Integrating cost and time metrics into media asset management workflows: Understanding the true cost of cloud storage for media archives
Roy Burns, Vice President of Media Solutions, Integrated Media Technologies
Metadata plays an important role in media asset management (MAM), powering access control, searchability and workflow automation. The more we know about our assets, the more efficient and usable our digital asset management (DAM) and MAM systems become. As cloud and operating-expense services have become more ubiquitous, it has become essential to understand time and cost implications and how they correlate to media workflow. This paper discusses the value of tracking cloud storage and egress metrics as metadata within DAM and MAM systems. By correlating these metrics against existing metadata, administrators are able to build total cost of ownership models, budget more effectively and enable a ‘chargeback’ usage model. These metrics also help to manage end users’ expectations more effectively within the MAM and storage ecosystem.
Keywords: metadata, SLA, MAM, cloud storage, TCO, business intelligence, budgeting, chargeback -
Artificial intelligence for content and context metadata retrieval in photographs and image groups
Peter Fornaro, Co-Head of the Digital Humanities Lab and Vera Chiquet, Scientific Assistant, University of Basel
Cataloguing is a frequent bottleneck in the digitisation of analogue images as it is impossible to scale the necessary content-related knowledge. As this paper discusses, however, it is possible to use well-trained artificial intelligence to semi-automate metadata enhancement for photographic collections. The paper describes a study in which participants indexed historical collections of photographs. In a subsequent interdisciplinary project with contributions from cultural anthropologists, computer scientists, digital humanities researchers and art historians, these descriptions and indexes were then used to train machine-learning components. With this interdisciplinary approach, it is hoped that cataloguing practices can be enhanced, generating new insights into AI and semantic metadata.
Keywords: Machine learning, analogue and digital photography, cultural heritage, semantic metadata, cbir, iiif, curation -
Automating the packaging and ingest processes to preserve bulk digital collections
David Cirella, Digital Preservation Librarian and Grete T. Graf, Digital Preservation Librarian, Yale University Library
Providing support to ingest and access bulk collections requires early planning around access and exploring methods that are specific to the data attributes. This paper explores the motivations, constraints and methods that have been employed in the development and implementation of dual automation-based solutions for processing and ingesting large-scale collections into a digital preservation system at the Yale University Library. Implementing dual methods has allowed for the use of multiple technology stacks, close collaboration between preservation staff and subject specialists, and a considerable increase in throughput.
Keywords: Digital preservation, automation, bulk data, access planning -
Five features in a digital asset management system you never knew you needed
Marissa Masangcay, Technical Marketer, Cloudinary
As companies transition from traditional digital asset management (DAM) platforms to modern DAM platforms, it is essential to know what differentiates these technologies. Today’s platforms go beyond the traditional management of assets, that is, storage and organisation. Whether companies are looking to implement, expand or update their DAM system, they must do the research and be aware of the latest capabilities. This paper discusses how modern DAM systems have not only adapted to the ever-evolving needs of customers to deliver a rich media experience across a variety of devices and channels but also take into consideration their future needs as well. The paper also explores about how modern DAM systems include a vast amount of functionalities such as automated optimisations of images and videos, workflow automations through artificial intelligence, embeddable widgets extending DAM capabilities and integrations with other applications in their technology stack.
Keywords: Media optimisation, automation, artificial intelligence, image, video, DAM -
The Nixon Tapes in the digital age
Cary McStay, Supervisory Archivist, National Declassification Center and Daniel Rodríguez, Supervisory Archivist, Digitization Archival Services, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
This paper draws on the history of the Nixon White House Tapes to provide a case study in audio digitisation for preservation and access. The recordings, made between 1971 and 1973, represent one of the most important recorded sound collections in US history and range from personal conversations between family members and work associates to classified conversations. In 2013, the Nixon Library, part of the National Archives and Records Administration, began comprehensive digitisation for preservation and access. This paper describes how digitisation and the digital workflows developed by archivists have served this collection well, giving staff the flexibility to address public requests for declassification review by agencies, and to adjust to changes in staffing levels, priorities, and even work conditions.
Keywords: Audio digitisation, digital preservation, digital review, digital planning, declassification -
Audio preservation: The tiny spur that no one noticed
Stefano S. Cavaglieri, Chief Technology Officer and Gabriele Franzoso, Principal Audio Preservation Engineer and Machinery Maintenance Manager, Swiss National Sound Archives
When digitising an analogue audio recording, audio archivists adhere strictly to the recommendations compiled by bodies specialised in audio preservation; entrust the original sound documents to the hands of well-trained preservation engineers; use the best, optimally calibrated, transfer equipment; and listen carefully to the result of the transfer. To gauge the quality of the work in progress, archivists rely on a number of graphic aids. Perhaps understandably, these visual tools are usually focused within the boundaries of the audio signal; however, by extending the fields and methods of measurement, it is possible to make some interesting — and sometimes even alarming — discoveries. As this case study demonstrates, no one can be 100 per cent insulated against this.
Keywords: Audio digitisation, cultural heritage, sampling rate, interference, ethics -
Audio forensics and provenance analysis: Technologies for media verification and asset management
Patrick Aichroth, Head of Media Distribution and Security Research, Luca Cuccovillo, Researcher and Milica Maksimović, Researcher, Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology
This paper discusses a number of audio forensics and provenance analysis technologies that were developed for media verification and media asset management, describing the motivation behind them, the methods used to develop them, and the way they are applied in practice. The paper also shows how the technologies may be adapted and applied to other domains. Finally, it outlines why it is crucial for research and development to follow an iterative, interactive process that does not require large budgets, but rather the willingness of users (here: broadcasters) and researchers to conduct experiments with limited risk and investment instead of waiting for ‘perfect projects’ and ‘perfect technologies’.
Keywords: content verification, copyright management, metadata management, media asset management, audio fakes, cheapfakes, shallowfakes, deepfakes -
Selecting a collections management system: Considerations for information professionals
Margot Note, Founder and Principal, Margot Note Consulting
Cultural heritage organisations are facing a growing demand for information services at the same time as diminished funding. Success requires innovative practices that maximise resources while focusing on user needs. A good collections management system supports these goals, allowing information professionals such as librarians, archivists and curators to preserve and reveal records of enduring value. This paper discusses the process for implementing a collections management system to allow institutions to uncover collections and fulfil their commitments to research, education and outreach.
Keywords: Archives, collections management systems, implementation, information professionals, migration
Volume 9 Number 3
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Editorial
Simon Beckett, Publisher -
Papers
Case Study: Integrating artificial intelligence metadata within Paramount’s digital asset management system
Dony West, Executive Director, Digital Archive, Caitlin Denny, Senior Media Archivist and Rebecca Ruud, Media Archivist, Paramount Pictures
The Stills Archive team at Paramount Pictures Asset Management Group is responsible for the preservation and digitisation of all photography and artwork created in conjunction with each title produced by the studio. The studio’s digital asset management (DAM) system is a customised solution built on a trusted and widely used asset management platform. By partnering with a third-party artificial intelligence (AI) service, the DAM system creates AI metadata to coexist with human-generated metadata. Over the past year, Paramount’s Stills Archive team has experimented with this new metadata technology with the goal of streamlining workflow procedures in preservation and reducing the time spent on research requests. This paper outlines the vision, goals, implementation process and challenges associated with this endeavour.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, computer learning, metadata, photography, celebrity detection, stills archive -
The benefits of migrating content to the cloud: How mass tape-to-cloud migration services helped the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame preserve music history
Kyle Evans, Chief Commercial Officer, Tape Ark and Jennie Thomas, Director of Archives, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened the doors of its library and archives in 2012, magnetic backup tape storage was the right solution for managing large files like the ones for its induction ceremonies, original concerts, education series and programmes. Over time, however, many of those tapes became less accessible due to hardware and software failures and onsite storage limitations. In 2018, after the Rock Hall evaluated its underlying technical infrastructure and needs, it decided to do what a growing number of organisations have been doing: migrate to the cloud. This case study examines how Tape Ark’s mass tape-to-cloud migration services helped the Rock Hall move data stored on Linear Tape-Open (LTO) tape storage to the cloud, where it can be preserved for years to come while being instantly accessible at any time and from anywhere.
Keywords: digital asset management, DAM, linear tape-open, LTO, cloud migration, stiction, hierarchical storage management, HSM, on-prem, sticky shed syndrome, orphaning, archives, preservation -
Audiovisual piracy in the football industry
Juan J. Rotger, Global Content Protection Manager, Área Audiovisual y Antipiratería, LaLiga
Audiovisual rights in the sports sector require effective and rapid protection as their value lies in live transmission. This paper discusses digital piracy at the global level, using practical examples from LaLiga — the private sports association responsible for organising professional football competitions in Spain. Giving special mention to Spanish law, This paper explores the legal concepts surrounding this issue. This paper also describes key technological aspects of the problem in order to help readers understand how certain technologies and illegal platforms work.
Keywords: piracy, football, sports, intellectual property, audiovisual rights, copyright -
Narration in digital archiving: Functional design in FINA’s media asset management digital catalogue
Joanna Kaliszewska, Head of Digital Repository, National Film Archive — Audiovisual Institute, Poland
Building an efficient media asset management (MAM) database requires not only effective tools and multi-dimensional metadata structures, but also detailed analysis of the unique characteristics of audiovisual collections. Finding the narrative inside preserved data may be the key to achieving better perspective during the user experience design process. This paper describes the measurements required for successful user-based design and discusses the importance of assigning the ‘nodal points’ during the construction of data structures. It also includes a detailed description of the experiences gained during the redevelopment of FINA’s MAM database.
Keywords: narration, design, data model, user experience, preservation -
Smart stacking of machine learning and semantic technologies in media management
Sally Hubbard, Director of Media Management and Maureen Harlow, Director of Digital Media Center at PBS Operations, Engineering & Distribution and Athina Livanos-Propst, Editorial Services Manager & Librarian, PBS Education
The television sector has well-established industry standards and conventions around the description of franchises, shows, episodes and other aspects of production and distribution. However, time-based metadata describing specific moments and clips are much rarer. This is in large part because, without augmentative or assistive technology, such metadata are hard to produce at scale and at sufficient quality. This paper describes a project at the US-based Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) that combined machine learning and semantic technology to provide time-based metadata describing moving image content that both linked back to and enriched the organisation’s broader information domain. The content chosen for the project was a selection of episodes from ‘Sesame Street’, the long-running and much-fêted show aimed at preschoolers produced by the Sesame Workshop, and the featured taxonomy (part of a larger in-development PBS knowledge graph) was developed by the PBS Education division.
Keywords: industry standards, franchises, production and distribution, time-based metadata, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop, PBS Education divisions -
Using preservation action registries to automate digital preservation
Jack O’Sullivan, Senior Software Engineer and Jonathan Tilbury, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Preservica
Using a case study of how Preservica software was used within the Preservation Action Registries initiative, this paper explores how the exchange of file format best practice across the whole digital preservation community, including between suppliers of competing systems, is leading to improved automation. The primary focus of this work is on enabling users without deep technical knowledge to avail themselves of these technologies, so they can focus on the organisation, curation and presentation of their collections. The paper also explores some of the unanswered questions regarding how this automation can be achieved and what part users who do have deep technical knowledge will play in this future
Keywords: PAR, migration, digital preservation, automation, registry, policy -
Applying business architecture to identify the need for a digital asset management solution: Case study of Pandora’s digital transformation journey
Amrutha Suresh, Enterprise Business Architect, Pandora Media
This paper presents a framework to help organisations identify the kind of digital asset management solution they require to transform their digital business. It provides a case study to illustrate why Pandora decided to invest in digital asset management and how its approach helped to mature the company’s core business capability and support its strategic goals and objectives. The paper also details how Pandora applied the key concepts of business architecture to model its existing core capability, and then identify and analyse gaps in order to design the solution roadmap and develop a successful model.
Keywords: digital asset management, digital business transformation, business architecture, business capability model, capability maturity, value streams, time and motion study, business process, traceability -
IRENE audio preservation at NEDCC: Developing workflows and standards for preservation projects that use innovative technology
Julia Hawkins, IRENE Audio Engineer and Bryce Roe, Director of Audio Preservation Services, Northeast Document Conservation Center
In 2014, the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) began offering the IRENE audio preservation service to libraries, archives and museums. IRENE is an innovative optical scanning technology for digitising grooved audio carriers without using a stylus. Developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Library of Congress, IRENE uses cameras and microscopes to image the grooves at high resolution, and customised software that mimics the motion of the stylus through the grooves in the images to produce an audio file. The multi-step process offers the operator a critical degree of control for addressing the unique characteristics of ‘irregular’ (ie not produced in a controlled, professional environment) grooved recordings often found in archival collections, but also complicates the task of properly documenting the digital provenance of the files it produces. The rapid development of this technology presents the challenge of continually updating workflows and methods, at a rate faster than audio preservation standards and best practices can dictate. This paper provides a case study in developing preservation workflows and standards for projects that use innovative technology, by working from a foundation of established standards and providing transparent documentation of the ways in which IRENE deviates from those standards.
Keywords: audio preservation, digital provenance, digital preservation, workflows, digitisation, standards -
Digging for gold in the archive: Artificial intelligence is the treasure map
Ethan Dreilinger, Senior Solutions Engineer, IBM Watson Advertising and Weather
There is gold (or at least golden nuggets) in digital archives, and unlocking that value can provide the new revenue stream that media outlets are looking for. Deployed wisely, artificial intelligence (AI) can offer the solution — it can scale quickly, it can have little to no impact on legacy workflow, and it can provide a direct line to monetisation. As this paper discusses, however, there are certain issues that must be addressed first, not least the fact that most media archives contain literally hundreds of thousands of video, image and audio files, for which metadata standards have evolved over decades. Compounding this is the lake of unused first-party data. This paper shows how AI can be used to solve the metadata issues underlying the various files in an archive and unlock the hidden value in so-called long-tail content, with minimal impact to existing work, workers and workflow.
Keywords: sales cycle, media companies, content, archive, AI-based solution, legacy workflow, metadata standards
Volume 9 Number 2
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Editorial
Simon Beckett, Publisher -
Papers
Experience matters: How user experience provided a new direction for digital asset management
Tracy Olmsted, DAM Innovations Specialist, Amway Corp
In 2018, Amway’s digital asset management system was extremely customised and complex. Users were working around it or had stopped using it altogether. This case study reviews the research, recommendations and requirements that provided Amway’s digital asset management programme with a new direction and illustrates the importance of focusing on the user.
Keywords: UX, user experience, research, users, stakeholders, requirements, design process -
Digital asset management at Lands’ End, Inc.: Past experiences, present challenges and future opportunities
Richard Swaziek, Senior Director of Creative Operations, Lands’ End
Lands’ End, Inc. is a leading uni-channel retailer of casual clothing, accessories, footwear and home products. Products are offered online, on third-party online marketplaces, and through retail locations. Lands’ End is a classic lifestyle brand with a passion for quality, legendary service and real value, and seeks to deliver timeless style for men, women, kids and the home. To remain highly competitive in the global retail marketplace, the company’s leadership recognised that a major enterprise digital asset management system upgrade was necessary to continue to service the company’s valued customers and enable ongoing and expanding business opportunities. This paper summarises the journey of experiences, challenges and change management tactics required to implement a new enterprise system, and how the new system is laying a foundation for future opportunities and successes.
Keywords: digital asset management, vision, leadership, global, enterprise, teamwork, change management, process, communication, trust, motivation, opportunities -
Machine learning in the library: Developing an inter-departmental core solution to manage data
Patrice-Andre Prud’homme, Director of Digital Curation, University Archives, Kay K. Bjornen, Research Data Initiatives Librarian and Phillip Doehle, Digital Services Librarian, Oklahoma State University Library
The Oklahoma State University Archives identified the need for an updated, comprehensive inventory of its digital assets to guide the development of digital preservation priorities. Creating it was complicated by sparse records, limited manpower and dependence on fading institutional memory as well as poor data management. A strategic planning process was launched to address these deficiencies. Machine learning (ML) was identified as a promising tool to minimise the labour-intensive process of sorting artefacts and identifying records that needed to be augmented, cleaned or eliminated from the collection. A pilot project to explore the effectiveness of using ML to curate a high-value archival collection was implemented. This paper describes the nature of ML, its promise and limitations for use in archives, and the outcomes of the pilot project. In particular, the pilot project showed promising results in the application of facial recognition techniques. Collaboration with interested colleagues in other departments suggests that ML can be widely applied to projects throughout the library.
Keywords: archives, automation, data management, digital curation, face recognition, library, machine learning -
Organisational taxonomy alignment project use case
Mindy Carner, Independent consultant and John Passmore, Director of Streaming and On-Demand Audio Architecture, New York Public Radio
New York Public Radio (NYPR) is a nonprofit media organisation that owns numerous public radio stations and a live performance space in the New York area. Since 1924, WNYC has grown and evolved in response to changing radio technology and consumer behaviours, most recently introducing podcasts to its numerous audio experiences. In 2019, NYPR embarked on a metadata and taxonomy alignment project to support the end-to-end alignment of metadata tags across content types, brands and business functions. The project began by surveying relevant business units and performing audits of content and data across those teams to identify the most salient issues to be addressed and to prioritise actions through the rest of the project. This paper describes how user personas and ‘content journey maps’ were drawn up to identify the driving needs of the primary business units and the current state of content as it moved through its life cycle, including the players involved in the content’s life cycle, the systems it touches, the metadata applied and whether the content is archived. As this paper will show, the information from these exercises drove the creation of a multi-tiered taxonomy with top nodes classifying information around people, content, assets, entities and distribution.
Keywords: taxonomy, media content, audio archiving, audio metadata -
Leveraging the flexibility of Islandora to create a dual-use digital repository
Alicia Esquivel, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Tim Fluhr, Systems and Institutional Repository Librarian and Adam Strohm, Director of University Archives and Special Collections, Paul V. Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Technology
In 2019, Paul V. Galvin Library at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago launched a new iteration of the university’s institutional repository. This single instance of Islandora serves as both the traditional institutional repository and a digital collections portal for Illinois Tech’s University Archives and Special Collections. The migration from an existing DSpace repository was completed in-house by librarians without vendor assistance. This paper describes the migration process from DSpace to Islandora and explores some of the issues and decisions that arose when attempting to use a single instance of Islandora for two sometimes conflicting purposes, including questions of user interface, descriptive metadata and treatment of compound objects.
Keywords: institutional repositories, Islandora, migration, collaboration, digital collections -
Perfect strangers: Digital asset management and lean Six Sigma
Beth Goldstein, DMS Change Agent, Discover Financial Services
In order to grow, organisations must be nimble at problem-solving, agile at exploiting opportunities and adept at surmounting challenges. Growing a business entails more than just a focus on efficiency and costs, as quality and effectiveness matter too. It is a common misconception that adopting lean processes means doing more with less. In reality, the main focus is on simplifying processes, thus improving output and making work better (for everyone). Lean thinking entails looking at what you do, the kind of problems you have and how you currently solve them. Within the field of digital asset management, problem areas may be anything from mistakes or errors in metadata, to waiting on assets to be uploaded to be used, to moving files from one place to another manually. This paper discusses the benefits of lean continuous improvement for digital asset management. It describes how to utilise lean principles that have been vetted and practised by businesses all over the world, in all kinds of industries, to help them be successful, and discusses how these principles apply to digital asset management.
Keywords: digital asset management, Six Sigma, continuous improvement, change management, problem-solving, eliminating waste, value, lean -
How digital asset management can optimise next-generation retail experiences
Danny Baranowski, Senior Consultant and Seshu Pandari, Senior Manager, OnPrem Solution Partners
This paper argues that retail companies that build and strengthen relationships with customers will have a competitive advantage over their rivals. It also discusses how recent technological advances make it economical for consumer packaged goods companies to sell their products directly to consumers as well as provide a strategic advantage by enabling end-to-end product control, which has a direct effect on the customer experience.
Keywords: digital asset management, DAM, retail DAM, customer experience, CPG advertising -
Managing privacy: A survey of practices in digital archives and libraries
Virginia Dressler, Digital Projects Librarian, Kent State University, Kelley Rowan, Digital Archives Librarian and Rebecca Bakker, Digital Collections Librarian, Florida International University
Building on past research regarding privacy and digital librarianship, this study surveyed managers of digital libraries across the USA to gauge prevalent attitudes regarding individual privacy versus access to information. In the wake of controversy surrounding the Europe Union’s 2014 ruling regarding the ‘right to be forgotten’, the authors sought to develop a better understanding of how digital library managers in the USA handle privacy concerns, such as takedown requests, especially in light of the strong protections for first amendment rights in the USA. This research explores whether the majority of archives and digital libraries have developed privacy policies and what they consider to be the key elements of a robust privacy policy. The study also explores the shifting attitudes around privacy and access, both of digital library managers and of their institutions, in an effort to determine how these relate to the handling of such requests. Finally, the research examines how often information professionals receive takedown requests from their communities, with the hope of tracking this trend over time. This paper provides an overview of the current landscape involving privacy policies and takedown requests, and highlights some of the fundamental issues facing information professionals so that they may have the necessary resources to develop and implement privacy policies at their institutions.
Keywords: digital archives, digital libraries, privacy, practitioners, ethics, information professionals
Volume 9 Number 1
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Editorial
Simon Beckett, Publisher -
Case Studies
The case for companywide enterprise digital asset management
Preston Anderson, Director, Global Marketing Solutions & Support and Jonathan Phillips, Manager, Enterprise Digital Asset Management and Marketing Support, Marriott International
Digital media management systems have become critical to the successful implementation of brand expression programmes and brand marketing campaigns. Marketing and IT leaders increasingly need these systems to become the single point of truth for media assets. They need enterprise digital asset management (DAM) to solve big problems around accessibility to media across platforms and channels. The successful management of platform access to media assets enables marketers to safeguard, leverage and reuse their most prized assets. Getting these actions right positions marketing campaigns for success and leads to an effective return on investment on these assets. This presumes that usage of the DAM system is good and consistent across all content contributors. Strong DAM adoption across the enterprise sets the foundation through which excellent marketing execution can be realised. This paper explores the goal of strong enterprise DAM adoption and takes a deep look at what this means and how it can be done in a highly variable and decentralised environment with an unsophisticated user community.
Keywords: adoption, launch, UX, buy-in, branding, workflow, enterprise, consolidation, stakeholder, measurement, strategy -
A Herculean task: Assessing digital content processes before a migration
Hannah Stitzlein, Document Manager, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Sidney Gao, Digital Imaging Coordinator and James Van Mil, Digital Projects and Preservation Librarian, University of Cincinnati Libraries
This paper discusses how a re-evaluation of strategies prompted by the combination of personnel and workflows changes and the impending migration from DSpace and Luna repositories to a new Samvera application provided the university of Cincinnati Libraries Digital Content Team with an opportunity to assess and appraise assumed processes and identified several areas that would benefit from an overhaul.
Keywords: digital collection migration, digital project workflows, Samvera repository, DSpace repository, Luna repository, digital content strategy -
Normalising migration: Reacting to the failure of a digital preservation platform
Todd Digby, Chair, Library Technology Services and Fletcher Durant, Head of Conservation and Preservation, University of Florida
Since 2006, the University of Florida participated in the Florida Digital Archive (FDA), the mission of which was to provide a cost-effective, long-term preservation repository for digital materials in support of teaching, learning, scholarship and research in the state of Florida. Managed by the Florida Academic Library Services Cooperative (FALSC), FDA used the Dark Archive in the Sunshine State (DAITSS) repository software. Developed with Institute of Museum and Library Services grant funding, the DAITSS system was designed to implement active preservation strategies based on format transformations including forward migration, normalisation and localisation. During autumn 2018, FALSC announced that the sunsetting of FDA would take place in June 2019. This paper discusses how the University of Florida Libraries, with its large digital collection, responded when its statewide digital preservation system was shut down and it had only months to transition. It will discuss challenges in managing the technology infrastructure response while adhering to digital preservation best practices.
Keywords: digital preservation, digital archive, migration, exit strategy -
Building open source audiovisual collections management systems on Samvera
Karen Cariani, David O. Ives Executive Director, WGBH Media Library and Archives & Project Director, American Archives of Public Broadcasting and Richard Green, Operations Adviser, Samvera
Building and using an open source community-supported system to manage audiovisual materials for a digital archive/library has many advantages and challenges. Being able to dictate the features, have a system speak to specific needs, and have staff on hand that can change or fix problems is certainly appealing. Embarking on this effort with an established open community, such as Samvera, has the advantages of a robust community of developers and service vendors to turn to for help. Managing needed customisations to core code base, keeping track of updates and contributing to the community, however, is challenging. For WGBH, a public television station with a robust 60-year archive, most customisations are due to the use PBCore to structure the metadata of the audio-visual items. This paper focuses on WGBH’s efforts to build a system for its Media Library and Archives based on the Samvera digital repository framework and its Hyrax and Avalon Media System ‘products’.
Keywords: open source, metadata modelling, PBCore, Samvera, Hyrax, Avalon -
A workflow for workflows: Case management at the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries
Mikala Narlock, Digital Collections Librarian and Peggy Griesinger, Metadata Technologies Librarian, University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries
The University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries strives to be a transformative research library that acquires, preserves, organises and stewards knowledge in all forms. This includes the creation of digital collections using rare, unique and/or high interest materials. Prior to the efforts described in this paper, there was a great deal of siloing among the different units charged with stewarding the digital collection process at Hesburgh Libraries. The Digital Collections Workflow (DCW) team was convened as a way to bridge the gaps between units to improve efficiency and reduce redundancy. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the state of digital collections work at the Hesburgh Libraries before, during and after the DCW process. The authors will discuss in detail the design and implementation of the case manager methodology and the Digital Collections Oversight team that was born out of the DCW discussions.
Keywords: digital collections, workflows, case management -
Ethics, sustainability and the challenge of digital curation for a real-time archive
Katie Romabiles, Institutional Repository Specialist and Amanda Lanthorne, University Archivist San Diego State University Library, Arel Lucas, Faculty Metadata Librarian, University of Southern California Digital Library and Lisa Lamont, Interim Associate Dean and Head of Digital Collections, San Diego State University Library
As immigration became a divisive topic in the USA, Allies to End Detention, a group of dedicated community activists, began writing to would-be immigrants held in detention centres. Understanding the importance of the information in the letters, the Allies asked the San Diego State University Library to archive the growing collection and to make the redacted letters accessible online. They hoped the letters would influence public opinion and possibly impact government policies. This paper outlines the issues with real-time sensitive archives, the complex workflow and the reasons why the collection was eventually removed from public access.
Keywords: archives, online libraries, immigration, community activism, risk assessment, ethics -
MAPping metadata
Margaret Mering, Metadata Quality Librarian, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Harriet E. Wintermute, Head of Metadata Services, University Library, Iowa State University
An ad hoc group at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Libraries collaborated to create a metadata application profile (MAP) to document and share information about metadata practices and content standards within each of the four Libraries’ digital repositories. The group consists four representatives who had responsibility for metadata in each repository. This paper provides overviews of each repository, along with their challenges, to include content characteristics, metadata and description practices, differing philosophies and any limitations imposed by the platforms. The early process included researching existing MAPs and metadata working group at other university libraries and then creating and sharing individual UNL repository MAPs. Working together, the group identified commonalities and agreed upon a minimum set of required metadata elements for all their repositories. With the minimum set of metadata elements established, the group developed and published the UNL MAP as a LibGuide available to the public. This MAP for descriptive metadata is only a first step; outlined are future MAP projects that UNL or the statewide University of Nebraska library consortium could adopt.
Keywords: metadata elements, metadata application profiles, digital repositories, digital collections, archival collections -
Warning sign: Building a sensitive content filter for historical news photography
Eric Weig, Digital Library Architect, University of Kentucky
The John C. Wyatt Lexington Herald-Leader Photographs Collection contains historical photographic images documenting 20th-century Lexington, Kentucky. The collection is housed at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center. To provide access to the collection, a digital library was designed and built using the Omeka open source web publishing platform. The digital library contains both published and unpublished news photography, including some content considered potentially sensitive, such as crime scene documentation and automobile accidents. This paper describes the collection, discusses the roles of sensitive content filters for online access, and the creation, from the technical and user experience viewpoints, of a custom sensitive content filter at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collection Research Center.
Keywords: news photography, digital library, sensitive content, filter, history, Kentucky, Lexington