T H I S A R T I C L E WA S R E P R I N T E D F R O M

I M A G E & D A TA M A N A G E R ,M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 5 , P P 3 8 , 3 9 , 4 0 , 4 1 .

© Copyright Knapp Communications. All rights reserved.

CONDITIONS OF USE This document is for use only by the purchaser andcannot be altered in any way. It is not to be sold to or used by any other thirdparties, vendors, distributors or retail outlets for any marketing purpose andcan only be used for marketing by the purchaser. Any infringement of theseconditions will be considered a violation of the publisher's copyright control.

Knapp Communications. PO Box 576, Strawberry Hills 2012.

Ph: +61 2 93182644. Fax: +61 2 93104608.

info@knapp.com.au

D I G I T A L A S S E T M A N A G E M E N T

The Australian War Memorial in Canberra is in some respects the nation’srepository of grief. In other respects it represents the best of human nature,and human spirit. It is a celebration of man’s capacity for sacrifice, to preserveall he holds sacred. It is a physical reminder of man’s capacity for unspeakableacts of barbarism in the name of ideology. To mark the upcoming commemorationof Anzac Day, IDM takes a look at how the nation’s wartime artefacts are beingdigitally preserved for future generations.

Age shall not weary themAWM_E01220

T H I S A R T I C L E WA S R E P R I N T E D F R O M

I M A G E & D A TA M A N A G E R ,M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 5 , P P 3 8 , 3 9 , 4 0 , 4 1 .

© Copyright Knapp Communications. All rights reserved.

CONDITIONS OF USE This document is for use only by the purchaser andcannot be altered in any way. It is not to be sold to or used by any other thirdparties, vendors, distributors or retail outlets for any marketing purpose andcan only be used for marketing by the purchaser. Any infringement of theseconditions will be considered a violation of the publisher's copyright control.

Knapp Communications. PO Box 576, Strawberry Hills 2012.

Ph: +61 2 93182644. Fax: +61 2 93104608.

info@knapp.com.au

D I G I T A L A S S E T M A N A G E M E N T

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Charles Bean, an historian and the official AustralianWar Correspondent of World War One, experiencedthe tragedy of Gallipoli and then moved on to the

horrors of the Western Front at Fromelles and Pozières.The concept of a war memorial was born while he was onthe battlefields of France in August 1916. Bean made it hislife’s work to see the Australian War Memorial (AWM)mandated by government, funded and built.

It is more than a physical memorial to the 102,000Australians who have given their lives in service to theirfellow Australians. It is also a rich collection of relics,artefacts, photographs and other memorabilia.

In the collection are photographs, recorded memoriesand items of a more personal nature that serve to remindfuture generations of a legacy of honour that is Australia’sparticipation in military engagements from Sudan in the1880’s to Afghanistan nearly 125 years later. The AWMtoday contains more than a half million individual recordsof artefacts, relics, and photographs that catalogueAustralia’s involvement. More than 220,000 photographsalone, in a digital database of more than 250,000 images.

“Men were encouraged to collect relics from thebattlefields on which they fought, so poignant and verypersonal items – crosses, diaries and cigarette cases –reside in a collection that also includes Lancaster bombersfrom World War Two; and field guns

from World War One and Vietnam,” said Martin Wood,of the AWM. “One enterprising Digger even collected oneof the Red Baron’s flying boots.”

The Memorial has had an active Collection ManagementSystem, or CMS, since the mid eighties, according to Wood.“The first minicomputer was installed in about 1985, andsince that time there has been a strong focus on creating adigital replication of the items in the collection as a meansof preserving them. Building an online digital databaseserves the purpose, and provides the added benefit ofopening access to our collection to a much wider, globalaudience.”

Working with Canberra-based software developer Assist,the AWM developed a specification for a system to addressthe complexity of the collection, its high volumes ofinterrelated data, and the need to define the scope andcharacteristics of virtual ‘displays’.

With database technology from Oracle as the foundationof the Memorial’s collection, the navigability of the dataand its presentation had to be addressed; the data had tohave an interface. This is where digital asset managementspecialists Piction became involved. Its Media Exchangewas implemented as an interface environment that couldbe customised to suit the requirements of the Memorial.

Aside from the obvious importance to the millions ofAustralians of the contents of the Memorial, the taskPiction was faced with was rendered that bit more difficultas a result of there being no obvious precedent, as Pictionfounder Erick Kendrick explains.

“Probably the biggest hurdle was it was all new and noother museum/cultural institution in the world was doingwhat the AWM was trying to achieve. The simple objective

of providing the collection base to any user group,allowing them to attach business rules as to how theseusers interacted with the object (from commercial andscientific/research perspective) and then seamlesslyautomating this into their various business units andprocesses using the Internet was actually quite complex.It was not only complex but we had to build a system thatcould be configured quickly to reflect a change indirection because it was very new to the Memorial.

“From a technical perspective, [the difficulty] was thescalability and performance aspects. The entire repositoryis currently well over half a million digital objects with apeak usage of close to a million users. We had to ensurethat the speed of the searches were fast for both thegeneral public users and researchers. We had to be ableto handle vast amounts of differing types of digitalobjects, understand that specific media type and associated

“Men were encouraged to collect relics fromthe battlefields on which they fought, sopoignant and very personal items - crosses,diaries and cigarette cases - reside in acollection that also includes Lancasterbombers from World War Two; and fieldguns from World War One and Vietnam.”MARTIN WOOD, AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL.

T H I S A R T I C L E WA S R E P R I N T E D F R O M

I M A G E & D A TA M A N A G E R ,M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 5 , P P 3 8 , 3 9 , 4 0 , 4 1 .

© Copyright Knapp Communications. All rights reserved.

CONDITIONS OF USE This document is for use only by the purchaser andcannot be altered in any way. It is not to be sold to or used by any other thirdparties, vendors, distributors or retail outlets for any marketing purpose andcan only be used for marketing by the purchaser. Any infringement of theseconditions will be considered a violation of the publisher's copyright control.

Knapp Communications. PO Box 576, Strawberry Hills 2012.

Ph: +61 2 93182644. Fax: +61 2 93104608.

info@knapp.com.au

D I G I T A L A S S E T M A N A G E M E N T

“We are very proud to be working with the Memorial and being the backbone of howthey share or re-tell Australia’s involvement in the wars. But more importantly we feelespecially good in being able to provide a way for families to reconnect with theirpast and remember the sacrifices and contributions. Personally, I now have a deeperappreciation of the phrase ‘Lest we Forget’.”ERICK KENDRICK, FOUNDER, PICTION

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metadata in a single system. So whether it was a document,an image or an audio file we had to be able to easilymanage it from the varying requirements of each businessunit within the Memorial. So, for example, the AWM couldupload volumes of images into Piction and the systemwould automatically create thumbnails and other lowquality versions of the images. If required, they could thenstrip out embedded metadata from the file at upload.Alternatively, if it was a PDF document then we wouldautomatically create “summaries” of the document andPiction would automatically understand the contents of thedocument for context searching and retrieval purposes.”

The next biggest challenge, says Kendrick, wasautomating a contextualisation layer for the AWM’s digitalcollection, which involves providing a simple way for theMemorial to provide context to an object for a particularuser group. Kendrick offers an example of how this layerworks.

“The “G for George” Bomber photo object could havethree different contexts to three different user groups. Tothe general public it may just be an image that they canpurchase under a simple pricing model. For publicationsgroups there may be a requirement for an automatedlicensing framework. And for partner research organisationsthere may be clusters of other objects that they need toview to ensure they understand the digital object correctly.”

Automating the workflow processes and integration withother business systems such as SAP was also paramount.

“As an example, the workflow for specific requests foreach media type differs,” explains Kendrick. Productionrequests for images have a complex workflow forfulfilment where as for documents it may not be ascomplex. Then with each request that has a productioncost/transaction we automatically integrate to their SAPsystem.”

A tradition of preservation, and preservation of traditionGetting to the point where they are now has beensomething of a long drawn out affair, reveals the AWM’sMartin Wood.

“The museum community, generally speaking, don’t havestrong content management systems. We have beenworking towards getting our entire collection online forfive years.

“The greatest motivator in working with Piction, Oracleand Assist on building the site will always be resolving theconflicting needs to both preserve the legacy and provideaccess to it. An example is the Changi Quilts; the morethan 400 female civilian internees in Changi Prison madethree, and two of them are in the Memorial’s collection.

“The quilts have an iconic status amongst Australianveterans, but they are very fragile. So digitising them for

display online is a way to preserve them and share themat the same time.”

While the Australian War Memorial stringently protectsits assertion of copyright over its images, that is not to saythat it is not eager to share reproductions of them with thepublic. Image Exchange enables this e-commerce activityto take place, coordinating the reproduction for sale of animage to a purchaser, and interfacing with the onlinebanking facilities provided by National Australia Bank.

“Working with Media Exchange, we believe the userswill be able to find what they are looking for and at thesame time we will be able to preserve the collectionfrom degradation over time. We can make our collectionavailable, control copyright issues, provide a completeservice, and collect a nominal fee that enables us torecover the costs of the service,” adds Wood.

The weight of a nationThe incalculable importance of preserving these artefactsto those involved in the wars - and the nation as a whole -impacted on Piction the most during the implementationprocess, as Kendrick reveals.

“The project held a mixture of emotions for us. Weobviously wanted to deliver a world class system for theMemorial so that they could better share the experiencesand vast amounts of knowledge on Australia’s war historyto anyone. When we started understanding some of thecontent and the stories and meanings behind them, iswhen we started to gain a deeper sense of importance onhow this would impact the Australian public. Of course,now we see people using the system on the Internet andbeing able to research their own family’s involvement, weget a great sense of pride in being the engine of how thisknowledge gets shared in the Internet medium.”

Since the system has been introduced, the Memorialhas increased the rate of visitation by approximately 20percent.

The Piction system has also enhanced the AWM’scustomer service by significantly reducing the time toservice customer requests. Some requests for collectionitems would take up to three weeks to service but withPiction they were able to reduce that to days.

Every school in Australia is now also linked to theMemorial via the Piction system. Schools are able tobetter match knowledge programmes provided by theAWM and organise the educational visit over the Internetusing Piction. Previously, educational program requestswere taking up to an hour to service. This has beenreduced to minutes due to the ease of Piction’s web-based interface.

Kendrick acknowledges the emotional impact theproject has had on those at Piction involved in its fruition.

“We are very proud to be working with the Memorialand being the backbone of how they share or re-tellAustralia’s involvement in the wars. But more importantlywe feel especially good in being able to provide a wayfor families to reconnect with their past and rememberthe sacrifices and contributions. Personally, I now have adeeper appreciation of the phrase ‘Lest we Forget’.”

T H I S A R T I C L E WA S R E P R I N T E D F R O M

I M A G E & D A TA M A N A G E R ,M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 5 , P P 3 8 , 3 9 , 4 0 , 4 1 .

© Copyright Knapp Communications. All rights reserved.

CONDITIONS OF USE This document is for use only by the purchaser andcannot be altered in any way. It is not to be sold to or used by any other thirdparties, vendors, distributors or retail outlets for any marketing purpose andcan only be used for marketing by the purchaser. Any infringement of theseconditions will be considered a violation of the publisher's copyright control.

Knapp Communications. PO Box 576, Strawberry Hills 2012.

Ph: +61 2 93182644. Fax: +61 2 93104608.

info@knapp.com.au

D I G I T A L A S S E T M A N A G E M E N T

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