Digital Asset Management Systems

for the Cultural and Scientific

Heritage Sector

Thematic Issue 2 December 2002

Digital Asset Management Systems for the Cultural and Scientific Heritage Sector

Thematic Issue 2

CONTENT

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Guntram GeserIntroduction and Overview

Seamus RossPosition Paper on DAMS for the Heritage Sector

Michael MoonHow Do Cultural Artefacts Become Digital Assets?

Interview with James StevensonGrab the Opportunity to Increase the Visibility of the Collection

Michael SteemsonDigiCULT Experts Unravel the Hype of Digital Asset Management Technology

Interview with Guy HellierDAMS Make Cultural Heritage More Accessible

Norbert KanterDAMS versus CMS?

Guntram GeserCase Study: Octavo - Bringing the Capabilities of Advanced Digital Media to Rare Books and Manuscripts

Guntram GeserCase Study: Courtauld Institute of Art - Art and Architecture Project

Selected Literature

The Essen Forum Participants

DigiCULT: Project Information

Imprint

DigiCULT 5

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEWBy Guntram Geser

FUNCTION AND FOCUS

This second Thematic Issue concentrates onthe question of how cultural and scientificheritage organisations could enhance their

mission-related activities by using a new breed oftechnologies called Digital Asset ManagementSystems.A DAMS, in short, is a set of coordinatedtechnologies that allow the quick and efficient storage,retrieval, and reuse of digital files that are essential toan organisation. It provides the rules and processesneeded to acquire, store, index, secure, search, export,transform and make accessible these assets (or deriva-tives of them) as well as their descriptive information.

In particular, what merits highlighting is the factthat a DAMS can increase enormously the value ofdigital assets by managing the metadata about theassets. It is the metadata that make them useful (andre-useful) to the organisation, by indicating, forexample:Who created it? When? In what format?Are there other versions of it? What rights do we

TOPIC AND CHALLENGE

DigiCULT, as a support measure within theInformation Society Technologies Pro-gramme (IST), will for a period of 30

months provide a technology watch mechanism forthe cultural and scientific heritage sector. Backed bya pool of over 50 experts, the project monitors, dis-cusses and analyses the impact of new technologicaldevelopments on the sector.

To promote the results and encourage early take-up of relevant technologies, DigiCULT will publishits results through a series of seven Thematic Issues,three in-depth Technology Watch Reports, as well aspushing out the e-journal DigiCULT.Info to a gro-wing database of interested persons and organisa-tions.All DigiCULT products available so far can be downloaded from the project Website www.digi-cult.info.The Website also provides the opportunityto subscribe to DigiCULT.Info, and to post inte-resting culture and technology events.

The Thematic Issues focus on the topics of theexpert round tables organised by the DigiCULTForum secretariat.They present and interpret theresults of these workshops, and provide additionalinformation and opinions in the form of articles,interviews, case studies, short descriptions of relatedprojects, together with a selection of relevant litera-ture. In comparison with the Technology WatchReports, the Thematic Issues focus more on theorganisational, policy, and economic aspects of thetechnologies under consideration.Ways of enhancingthe adoption of new perspectives and approaches,e.g. new business models, as well as fostering co-operation between cultural heritage organisations,

industry players, researchers and other stakeholders,will certainly form a regular part of the Forum dis-cussions and hence the Thematic Issues.

Following the DigiCULT Forums on ‘Integrityand Authenticity of Digital Cultural HeritageObjects’ (Barcelona, May 2002) and ‘Digital AssetManagement Systems’ (Essen, September 2002), thenext Forums will focus on ‘XML:Towards an Inter-operable Semantic Web for Heritage Resources’(Darmstadt, January 2003) and ‘Learning Objects’(Amsterdam, June 2003). For updates, please consultwww.digicult.info.

6 DigiCULT

Seamus Ross from HATII, University ofGlasgow, in his position paper highlights thatin recent years an increasing amount of fun-

ding has been made available for digitisation projects;yet, due to current practices, only rarely have theseprojects led to renewable resources. He describes themain advantages DAMS provide, but also points tonecessary prerequisites like budget, skills and techni-cal infrastructure, and organisational ‘buy-in’.

Michael Moon, President of Gistics Inc., who hascarried out in-depth analysis of the DAMS market,gives a primer and examples of how heritage organi-sations could profit from adopting strategies thatdefine successful eBusiness companies.These strate-gies, enabled by DAMS, include, for example, work-

flow automation, enhancing self-service satisfaction,and instant delivery of services and products. In par-ticular, he highlights the fact that in the networkedenvironment companies as well as heritage organisa-tions need to become proficient e-publishers.

Two interviews, carried out by journalist Joost vanKasteren, illustrate the advantages of DAMS as seenfrom the perspective of an image collection of amajor museum, James Stevenson from the Victoriaand Albert Museum, and from a leading DAMS ven-dor, Guy Hellier from Artesia Technologies.

Michael Steemson from Caldeson Consultancy,New Zealand, who assists DigiCULT as scientificconsultant, summarises the results of the EssenForum.At the Forum, Mr Moon gave an introduc-tory presention of his view and key research findingsabout DAMS.The resultant discussion provides onthe one hand an elaboration of issues Mr Mooncould only hint at in his article. On the other hand,it shows where experts from the heritage institution’sand vendor’s side saw aspects in need of further dis-cussion.These include, for example, issues of work-flow re-design in institutions, or, even more intri-guing, why not stick to the collection managementsystem already in place?

To stimulate further discussion about the latterissue, we invited Norbert Kanter from zetcom AG,Berlin, to provide us with his view on ‘DAMS versusCMS?’

Two case studies provide insight into the practicalside of using DAMS to build high-quality digitalresources for scholars, students, and lifelong learners:

The case study on Octavo describes how thisinnovative e-publishing and technology service com-pany brings the capabilities of advanced digitalmedia to rare and precious books and manuscripts.Besides the considerable background information wereceived, we in particular want to thank Octavo forthe marvellous images they provided us with.Theyallow us to convey, in this Thematic Issue, an impres-sion of the richness and artistic nature of the dra-wings and printings in the history of science.

The Art and Architecture project of the CourtauldInstitute of Art, which is at present in month elevenof an initial two-year phase, provides an illustrativecase of how a DAMS is supportive in building thecentral repository of a larger-scale digitisation pro-ject. Giles O’Bryen, Project Director of Art andArchitecture, kindly provided us with the in-depthknowledge necessary to describe working steps suchas schema development and cataloguing.The casestudy also includes a brief summary of what the pro-ject team has learnt so far about the benefits andchallenges of using a DAM system.

OVERVIEW

have to this asset? For what purposes has it beenused before in the organisation or by partners? Thesemetadata are essential to heritage organisationswhose functions are to collect, archive, preserve, andprovide access to their collections for scholarly andeducational communities.

Yet, today DAMS are not widely used in the heri-tage sector. One major area where they are begin-ning to bloom is that of larger-scale digitisation pro-jects, like the Art and Architecture project at theCourtauld Institute of Art, described in this issue.Why DAMS enter the sector through this door,Czeslaw Jan Grycz, CEO and Publisher of Octavo,explained in an e-mail exchange with a fine meta-phor: ‘I've often admired the lowly sea urchin, in thesense that I see in its spiny structure a metaphor forthe field in which I find myself.Any individualaspect of digital preservation (think of an individualspine of the sea urchin) seems able to be pursued inquite specialised detail. Ultimately, however, all thevarious subject areas (optics, scanning arrays, proce-dures, colour management, publishing, selection,conservation, file naming conventions, creation ofderivatives, formats, standards, etc.) come down to asingle point. Combined, all the subjects form theorganism.’

The challenge for the many heritage organisationsthat today start digitising collections is really to formthis ‘organism’, with highly efficient managementsystems which, in particular, also enable them to pro-vide enhanced access to scholars and learners and todevelop new marketing tools and revenue generators(e.g. through new products or licensing).

Institutions – from archives, libraries and muse-ums to natural and environmental heritagebodies – are continually seeking new ways to

expand their provision of services.The developmentof an infrastructure capable of handling dissemina-tion and access to content in digital form has enabledthe creation of a new platform to support the provi-sion of content and services constructed to exploitand facilitate the use of that content. Over the pastdecade an increasing amount of funding has been

Digital assets have the very unique characte-ristic of being both product and asset. Somedigital assets exist only in digital form

while others are created through the digitisation ofanalogue materials such as text, still images, videoand audio. Content has the same value to institutionsas other assets such as facilities, products and know-how. Just as an organisation seeks to make efficientand effective use of its financial, human and naturalresources, it will now wish to use its digital assets totheir full potential without reducing their value.

Digital Asset Management Systems (DAMS) provi-de mechanisms to enable institutions to manage theirdigital resources.When associated with suitable poli-cies, procedures and licensing arrangements, DAMSprovide institutions with a way to facilitate theexploitation of their digital assets without depletingthe value of the asset itself.

At a basic level Digital Asset Management systemsuse technology, such as commercial-off-the-shelfdatabase management tools, to manage resources inways that enable users to discover them and ownersto track them.This may consist of either media cata-logues with pointers to where the assets are stored orasset repositories, or a combination of both.Thesecan be made accessible for use only in-house by staffin the content originating organisation, for restricted

DigiCULT 7

POSITION PAPER ON DAMS FOR THE HERITAGE SECTOR

By Seamus Ross

DEFINING DAMS

INTRODUCTION available at all levels, from revenue funding withininstitutions to grants from national and internationalfunding bodies and charities, to support the creationof digital representations of analogue holdings suchas paintings, prints, documents, photographs andaudio recordings. Much of this work has proceededas discrete institutional projects that have deliveredtheir results as standalone Web pages or on CD-ROM. Rarely do heritage institutions have the tech-nological infrastructure or the skills to manage thesedigital products as renewable resources.There iswidespread recognition that current practices do notprovide the most effective and powerful ways ofmanaging and providing access to digital materials.

use by others, or made more widely available to specific communities or the public through onlineaccess. Digital Asset Management involves the creationof a digital archive to hold resources, the provision ofan infrastructure that will help to keep the entitiesfrom becoming obsolete, and a range of discoveryand browsing tools to enable potential users to beable to identify, locate and retrieve the digital entitiesheld by the DAMS

A DAMS can serve a range of functions including:° providing support for content acquisition of born

digital entities, and digitised materials such as text,still images, audio and video, and its cataloguing,management and storage can be enhanced throughthe use of DAMS;

° mechanisms to manage metadata associated with digital entities;

° a foundation for services to manage the delivery of digital content;

° the foundation for the storing, managing and migrating of digital entities across time.They provide the basic building blocks for long-term digital preservation systems.

Generally, when we think of a DAMS we considerit as managing the entire process from acquisition(ingest) of a digital entity through its retrieval, deliveryand use to its long-term archiving. Commercial off-the-shelf DAMS such as Artesia’s Teams, Blue Order(TechMath), Bulldog, eMotion, IBM Content Manager,Informix Media 360, or Oracle’s Content ManagementSystem support these functions, although not all withthe same degree of sophistication. For example, someDAMS are better able to handle time-based media(e.g. audio and moving image material) than others.Off-the-shelf packages, although often expensive,represent a lower risk for most organisations thanwriting software from scratch. In addition, theybenefit from having other users and a support net-work. Most DAMS applications remain outside thefinancial resources of all but the largest of the herita-ge institutions. It is feasible to decompose the func-tionalities that DAMS support and to develop bespo-ke applications either completely from scratch or byintegrating software products.These approaches tendto be higher risk.

DAMS provide facilities to manage digital assets fromcreation to publication and archiving. Systems can auto-matically take the data output by the digitising process(or ingested from another system), assign the entity avirtual space, and set management access, security andmanagement attributes based on the metadata thatthe creator assigns to the entity; put simply, it canstore a digital entity and its metadata in a database.

8 DigiCULT

DAMS IN THE CULTURAL HERITAGE SECTOR:

DAMS bring many advantages for heritageinstitutions.For example, they:

° support the centralisation of discovery and access;° provide mechanisms to enable institutions to create

coherent services from disparate projects;° enable mechanisms for tracking the authenticity

and integrity of digital entities;° give organisations the ability to implement

effective and easily manageable authorisation,security and tracking systems;

° support the implementation of organisation-wide mechanisms for managing intellectual property rights;

° can generate savings by reducing the duplication of effort and resources;

° produce time savings for the creators and users through organisational structure and centralisation of digital resources;

° enable institutions to put in place asset browsing and querying tools;

° provide organisations with the tools to monitor the types of entities they hold, how users discover and select entities, and what types or specific entities attract the most attention from users.

Introducing DAMS into the heritage sector is acrucial step if we are to ensure that we are creatingrenewable resources. One major area with whichheritage institutions require assistance is with the dif-ficulties associated with tracking use and managingrights.Any digital asset is only of value to an institu-tion if the institution can manage the asset through-out its entire life-cycle – from creation through itsmultiple uses. For this reason, discussions of DAMSplace great emphasis on the support they can offer inthe area of rights management including assertion,protection and management. Protection comes invarious forms, from managing access to the digitalrepository, to tracking users, controlling what versi-ons of material users can access, and ensuring thatIPR metadata are linked to the entity when it isdelivered to the user. Of course, DAMS must be usedin conjunction with licensing arrangements, entityand user authentication technologies, and digital assettracking services.The problem facing heritage insti-tutions in this regard is that, once they provide accessto a digital asset, they have great difficulty monito-ring its use and that it is only used by the licenseeand for the purposes licensed. Individually, few heri-tage institutions have the financial or legal resources

DigiCULT 9

° What new opportunities do you intend that a DAMS will enable your institution to create? Howwill you measure whether or not it has enabled your institution to achieve that objective?

° What functions of DAMS are particularly well suited to the needs of your institution?

° How will you ensure institutional buy-in to DAMS technology?

° Have you established the cost-benefit ratio?° What procedures will you use to select, from the

various DAMS technologies on the market, the one that best fits your institution’s requirements? How will you document this process?

° Different types of heritage institutions have different types of digital assets, different profiles of users and variable metadata requirements. Have you established that the target DAMS is optimised for the data types which your organisation handles,that it supports adequate user profiling, and that the metadata categories supported are adequate?

° What impact do you anticipate the introduction of a DAMS will have on organisational thinking about, and use of, digital content?

° If as a small or medium-sized heritage institution you find many DAMS are outside the financial range of your institution, what would the implications be of collaborating with other institutions to share a DAMS?

° What obstacles do you anticipate encountering when you attempt to introduce DAMS technology,and how will you overcome these?

° What metadata are required to support your institution’s application of DAMS technology? How will the metadata be acquired and implemented?

° DAMS are based on a combination of technologies

and methods, including software applications and policies and procedures. Have you identified those elements that are software-based and those that arepolicies and procedures?

° Have you established plans to develop, test,disseminate and validate the application of these policies and procedures?

° Will a DAMS allow you to recognise the economic,educational or intellectual value of digital assets that have hitherto been overlooked?

° Will a DAMS allow your institution to exploit theeconomic value of its digital content?

° What risks to your institution’s digital content are posed by the use of DAMS?

° How will you integrate DAMS technology with your existing systems (e.g. digitisation systems)?

° For most heritage institutions, protecting IPR is not possible and the assumption that a DAMS can help them to address this problem is erroneous.What are the IPR implications of establishing a DAMS for your institution?

° As most DAMS are constructed from proprietary applications or code, they do necessarily provide institutions with an infrastructure that enables the long-term preservation of their digital assets. How will your organisation address the problem of long-term preservation?

These questions should enable you to profile yourinstitution’s need for and likely benefit from DAMStechnology.A key starting point is requirements ana-lysis. Before embarking on any development effort itis essential that you define your requirements preci-sely so that you can determine whether or not (orhow) the available technologies will meet yourneeds.

to pursue those who misuse their digital assets.The management of the large volume of material

likely to be held in a DAMS and its long-term pre-servation depends upon a storage managementsystem capable of moving media entities betweenonline disk, near-line tape and offline tape, as requi-red. But an organisation’s ability to harvest, reuse andrealise the value of its assets will only ever be as goodas the mechanisms that it can put in place for storingand retrieving assets from the media vault.TheDAMS must be able to handle a diversity of mediatypes (e.g. structured documents, still images, movingimages, audio, virtual reality objects, applications).

The current generation of DAMS is usually optimi-sed for particular classes of digital entities and tendsto fare less well at handling other classes.

There appear to be many difficulties when imple-menting the current generation of DAMS for use inheritage sector institutions.These include their genericnature, high cost, the complex technical infrastructurethat an institution must have if it is to run a DAMS,their proprietary nature, and the difficulties of ensu-ring organisational ‘buy-in’ once a DAMS is introdu-ced. Organisations need to assess both their need forDAMS and the impact that it could have on the waytheir organisation uses its information assets.

If you are thinking about introducing a DAMS, you might wish to ask the following questions beforeembarking on the investment:

10 DigiCULT

HOW DO CULTURAL ARTEFACTSBECOME DIGITAL ASSETS?H

Recent research of enterprisesthat have gone from ‘good togreat‘ reveals a particular pat-

tern of success.The organisationsthat continue to lead theirindustry in consistentgrowth of revenue,profit and share pricetend to do only oneor two things, withconsistent brillianceand mastery.Mediocre firms, onthe other hand, try to do many things, and none ofthem well.

Great firms deploy technology using the same pat-tern for success.They deploy only a handful of newtechnologies with one purpose in mind: how canthis new system or tool help us find and satisfycustomers, using profit as a measure of how wellthey have served a growing base of loyal customers.Great firms saw the Internet as an opportunity to dothe same one or two things brilliantly, only fasterand as a way to give their customers self-servicesatisfaction 24 hours a day. Mediocre firms used theInternet to experiment with new business models,commerce mechanisms, and new unproven techno-logies — the source of ‘dot bomb’.The only NewEconomy firms that succeeded followed the patternof success of the great firms of the old economy: Doone or two things well that truly satisfy customers(Amazon, eBay, E*Trade,Yahoo).

A survey of business practices today reveals thateBusiness has become business as usual; large andsmall firms have Websites and a growing portfolio ofinteractive services that support their basic mission(finding and serving customers).

The eBusiness part of doing business has brought

to the forefront several impor-tant issues:1. Customers expect mea-ningful interactions atWebsites; they expectself-service satisfaction.2. Customer-orientedWebsites require the pro-duction of tremendousquantities of new con-tent.3. Content production

for Websites representsone form of publishing.

4. Market requirementsnow demand that

every firm beco-me a proficientpublisher.5.Workflowautomation ofpublishingreduces cost and cycle time.

Many firms now recognise the need to automatetheir internal publishing workflows.This meansdeploying new technologies.These firms follow inthe footsteps of media, entertainment, publishing andadvertising firms that pioneered digital workflows inthe late 1980s and early 1990s.

By Michael Moon, President, Gistics Inc., Emeryville,California, USA

PATTERN OF SUCCESS

My firm has studied digital media produc-tion and the automation of publishingworkflows since 1991. Over this period

we have witnessed the dramatic emergence of whatwe call enterprise publishing. Once relegated to thecreative services or documentation department,customer demand for Web content and the soaringcosts of doing eBusiness have made enterprisepublishing a strategic issue for senior management.Executives from major firms worldwide want toknow how they can leverage the Internet, doing theone or two things that they already do well evenbetter (as measured by faster response mechanismsand lower costs in serving a customer).

In 1993 our research of digital media productionuncovered a technology that would later frame a

WORKFLOW AUTOMATION

DigiCULT 11

crucial challenge in the exploitation of the Internet:the capability for reusing pre-existing media, text andother digital files.We uncovered case after case offirms that use multimedia databases to store andretrieve reusable media and text.

In their development of the 777 aeroplane, Boeingused a multimedia database of technical diagramsused in documentation to save 1400 engineeringhours and over one million dollars in related expen-ses. In another instance, a small multimedia CD-ROMpublisher convinced Disney to invest $8 million dollarsfor 10 per cent of the firm (giving that small firm an$80 million valuation – five full years before the wildvaluation of the dot.com era).This small Wisconsinmultimedia developer showed Disney how a databaseof 30,000 reusable media assets saved 13 weeks and$70,000 in direct cost for the Lion King CD-ROM,and could do the same for other Disney titles.

In 1995 Apple Computer commissioned our firmto publish a series of white papers on best practicefor digital media production.This included the semi-nal white paper on media asset management, soonthereafter renamed digital asset management.

faction) while still reducing the cost of content pro-duction for Websites?

Digital asset management consists of three basicfunctions: 1) a searchable repository of reusablemedia, text and other digital files; 2) automation of enterprise publishing workflows; 3) delivery of personalised or self-service satisfaction to any authorised user.

The functions combine to accelerate the processcycle time of a firm.This means that a firm canbring a product or service more quickly to market,especially across multiple geographies or languages.

It means that a firm can reduce the cost of servingcustomers, giving them ways to answer their ownquestions, or ask better or more informed questionsof the right people. It also means that a firm canbring new ‘digital products’ (constructed from digitalcomponents or assets) to individual customers andcharge them an appropriate price.

In short, digital asset management fuels the engi-nes of commerce, the traditional offline and neweronline parts of a firm. DAM enables great firms touse the Internet to do the same one or two thingsbrilliantly, only faster, cheaper and better. DAM sup-ports the automation of enterprise publishing andthe codification of best practice for digital mediaproduction.

What is digital asset management, or DAMfor short? And how can cultural heritageinstitutions use DAM to better serve

their stakeholders (the delivery of self-service satis-

DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT

HOW DAM AUTOMATES THE DELIVERY OF IMAGES TO AUTHORISED USERS

The figure below depicts the delivery of personalisedor self-service satisfaction to a user of a DAM-enabled workflow.

REUSESTANDARDS

REUSABLE FILE

METADATASTANDARDS. PRISM. DUBLIN CORE. SCORM

DIGITAL ASSETREPOSITORY. CHECK IN/OUT. VERSION CONTROL. BUSINESS RULES

(RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS)

ASSETINVENTORY

RETRIEVALENGINE

PRODUCTIONDATA SOURCES

IMAGESERVER

SEARCH LIVE DATA DYNAMICIMAGING

METADATACONTAINER. FILE ATTRIBUTES

. WORKFLOW STATUS

. SUBJECT MATTER

. KEYWORDS

. BUSINESS RULES

. PROFILE, CREDITS

. METADATA

. VISUAL PATTERNS &

ATTRIBUTES

MEDIUM RES FOR SLIDES

HIGH RES FOR PRINT

LOW RES FOR WEB

©2002 MICHAEL MOON

12 DigiCULT

Dynamic insertion of live data into a graphic,photo or illustration as a DAM system deli-vers it to an individual user has many pro-

found and wide-ranging implications for commercialenterprises and cultural heritage institutions.Theinstant delivery of customised or personalised imagesto users of any Website around the world transformsa cultural artefact into a digital asset.An institutioncould connect its assetrepository to anetwork of im-age centres in keymetropolitancentres aroundthe world. Ineffect, thiswould enable aninstitution todeliver a num-ber of digitalservices to au-thorised end-users whilemaintainingfull, centralisedcontrol of theirdigital assets.

Let’s take a concreteexample.TheVatican hasalmost twomillennia ofcultural arte-facts that itwants to sharewith appro-priate users. Itmight makesome of itsmaterial avail-able to anylegitimate usersimply for theasking. In effect, it does that already when it postsJPEGs and GIFs on its Website.Anyone can grab anyimage from a Web page. Nonetheless, it spends a lotof time in responding to requests from tens (if nothundreds) of thousands of people a year.This inclu-des scholars from universities and seminaries, publi-

We start with reusable files, following a set of reusestandards. Many firms already have informal reusestandards. In the particular instance above, a reusestandard would specify where to place text or imagesin a multilayer illustration or digital photo file. Ofcourse, an institution will possess tens of thousandsor more physical artefacts in need of digitisation, anda sizeable number of undocumented digital files pro-duced over the past 15 or so years that may or maynot have a reuse value. In most cases, curators willneed to determine the value of cataloguing thesefiles, and place them into a DAM system.

The DAM system uses a detailed description ofeach asset to facilitate tracking and speedy retrieval.International committees have developed a numberof standardised descriptions or ‘metadata’; a goodDAM system will incorporate them. Most DAMsystems will ingest hundreds or thousands of files perhour, capturing a lot of descriptive metadata.Thisincludes static images, engineering drawings andcompound documents (with text, fonts, images, gra-phics), as well as video, animation, sound, voice andmusic.

The digital asset repository works like a library:patrons can check an asset. However, a repositoryalso keeps track of any changes that the user mayhave made to an asset as well as applying a set of pre-determined rights and permissions to a particularasset.This might include the need to sign a clearancecontract or pay a royalty — more business rules.

DAM systems and Websites share a dirty littlesecret: If a user cannot find a desired object or page,two things happen. First, the user goes away empty-handed (and less inclined to come back). Second, theuser spent precious time on unproductive work (forwhich somebody always pays). For these reasons, arobust and multi-mode search function remains criti-cal for DAM and Websites. In the spirit of killing twoor more birds with one stone, many firms now inte-grate the more robust, accurate and faster search function of their DAM system into their publicWebsites and corporate portals.

At the request of an individual user, the DAMsystem would locate the appropriate asset and extractthe required layers of data that the Image Server (farright in the figure above) will transform into a high-,medium- or low-resolution image.The Image Servercan also perform another piece of automated work-flow magic: It can grab live production data from anaccounting system, customer database, or anotherdata source, and instantly stitch it into the graphic,image, photo or document.

HOW DAM HELPS A CULTURAL HERITAGE INSTITUTION

DigiCULT 13

thumbnails that each of its local affiliates could poston their Websites with dynamic hyperlinks back tothe licensing and dynamic imaging capability of theChurch’s DAM system.

shers of books and magazines, producers of motionpicture and television programmes, authors of jour-nals and papers, members of the Church, and develo-pers of Websites and CD-ROMs. Some of thesepotential users know precisely what they want, refe-rencing an image from a book or other publishedmaterial. Others have a general idea of what theywant. Others have little or no idea, and need to browse large collections. Some users want to find acultural artefact that expresses a particular abstractionor idea (love, authority, exultation). Others want toexamine every image or drawing of a particularhistorical personage. Still others seek examples of aspecific architecture or ornamental detail. Some userswill pay handsomely for the perfect image.A corpo-rate sponsor of an exhibition would gladly donate a

considerablesum for broa-der (thoughnot unlimited)access to alarge collectionof digital arte-facts, enablingtheir marke-ting teams topick andchoose itemsfor promotio-nal uses.Alarge publisherof books andrelated com-mercial artwould pay asmall annualsubscriptionto access adigital archiveand licenseindividualitems as theneed arose.The Churchmight provi-sion local dio-ceses to offerlimited sea-

sonable access to sacred artefacts, giving individualparishioners the opportunity to create, download andprint (at authorised imaging centres) personalisedposters, calendars, postcards, etc. – at no cost or as a‘thank you’ for donations of a certain level. Finally,the Church could provide a library of low-resolution

AUTOMATING CROSS-MEDIA PUBLISHING WORKFLOWS

DAM can also help institutions automatetheir internal, cross-media publishing work-flows.This means that, with little extra

effort, mostly planning, an institution can produce amagazine, newsletter, direct mailer, catalogue,Webpage, poster, proposal, and presentation slide from thesame set of digital assets.

Let’s use one example among dozens of what wecall activity-task automation cells – the basic units of a workflow. Provided with a personal computer,software and network access, a Web content specialistwill spend 15 minutes to complete one activity, per-forming the following tasks: logon to a corporatenetwork, search for a digital image, retrieve severalpotentially useful files, open and inspect each one,edit the most useful one, save the changes, export orrender the image to a specific format and size, placethe image in a Web server, and verify if it looks okaywhen served from a Website.

A DAM system with a dynamic imaging systemperforms the same task, but in only 15 seconds.Typically, a Web content specialist working full-timewill prepare and place an average of 24 graphics orimages per day, 450 per month, or around 5,000annually.What do you do with the 14-minute, 45-second time savings? How about producing 5,700images in the span of 24 hours? Not only will thiscompress one year of labour into 24 hours; once pla-ced on the Website, each image remains linked to theoriginal asset.This means that any authorised usercan pan, zoom, inspect, crop and download high-,medium- or low-resolution renditions, some paid forand others at no cost, 24 hours a day. In this way,DAM can extend a publishing workflow and set ofautomated activity tasks to any stakeholder: scholars,public officials, citizens, corporate sponsors, students,and any employee of the institution.

DAM provides a way to unlock the value of cultu-ral artefacts without compromising their security,integrity, usability or accessibility.And, yes, in thecourse of all that, an institution can reduce its costs,become more efficient in the one or two things itdoes brilliantly, and expand the number of stakehol-ders it can serve.

Michael Moon, GISTICS Incorporated, www.gistics. com

mously because it would be accessibleworldwide.When I was in China last year, Inoticed there was an enormous hungerfor information on art anddesign.At the momentwe have 2,000 pictureson our Website.With a DAMS we couldeasily publish 20,000or 50,000 or eventu-ally one and a halfmillion pictures onthe site.’

Some people con-sider a DAMS to be a type of collection manage-ment system.These were introduced in the earlynineties and lots of museums now have one, inclu-ding the V&A. Stevenson: ‘There is a fundamentaldifference in the sense that a collection managementsystem is purely focussed on the collection itself, theobjects in the Museum. None of our pictures, frombooks in the National Art Library in the museum, orthose pictures of the buildings and its activities, isincluded in our collection management system. Butthat is thirty per cent of our assets. Not only that, itis also the thirty per cent that is very important inshaping the image of the museum.’

The advantages of digital asset management arenot only measured by numbers, be it visitors or pic-tures. Stevenson: ‘It is also important that our custo-mers get the pictures in the format they want.Theyare used internally for promotion of exhibitions andfor accompanying catalogues. But also for presenta-tions and for our educational worksheets.Theseworksheets are developed for use in schools, and alsofor adult education.Then, we sell pictures both tothe general public and to companies, who use it forpromotion, but also as a source of inspiration forproduct development and design.We have about ahundred licensees who actually make use of designs

14 DigiCULT

‘If we don’t jump on the bandwagon asmuseums, we are going to miss a great oppor-tunity to increase the visibility of our collec-

tions and ourselves as organisations.And that is goingto cost us, both in terms of audience and, in the longrun, in terms of money.’There is no need to convinceJames Stevenson, photographic manager of theVictoria and Albert Museum, of the benefits of adigital asset management system.With a small staff,he is responsible for expanding and maintaining theimpressive image collection of the Victoria andAlbert Museum for applied and decorative arts.Themuseum holds 4 million objects ranging from house-hold objects like vacuum cleaners to a very finecollection of European,Asian and Islamic art. It evenhas a collection of comic book covers.

The V&A’s picture collection started in 1856, theyear the Museum was established, and now contains1.5 million analogue and 50,000 digital pictures,made since 1995.The digital pictures are stored on800 CDs in Stevenson’s office.The analogue picturesare, according to Stevenson, ‘slowly digitised’ on aneeds basis.When people need a picture digitised fora catalogue or for the Website, the digital picture isstored on CD.

A DAMS would be very helpful, if only from anadministrative point of view. Stevenson: ‘At the mo-ment all requests for digital pictures go by way of my desk. I will praise the day when people themsel-ves can get access to a repository that contains ourdigital images and digitised photographs. Reductionof workload and an increase in efficiency would initself justify implementing a DAMS.’

But that is only part of the story he has to tell.Stevenson: ‘More importantly, especially in the lightof our public task, a DAMS would be instrumentalin increasing our audience.At the moment we attractabout two million visitors per year and the numbersare growing. By making our collection available onthe Internet we could increase that number enor-

GRAB THE OPPORTUNITYTO INCREASE THE VISIBILITY

OF THE COLLECTION

An Interview with James Stevenson, Victoria and Albert MuseumLondon, United Kingdom

by Joost van Kasteren

and patterns, for instance for printing textiles likebed linen and curtains. Sometimes even the furniturein our collection. For example, a chair from thefamous Scottish designer Rennie Macintosh hasbeen used for designing a new chair.A DAMS wouldhelp enormously in producing the right renderingfor our users.At the same time it would help us inmanaging our rights.’

Although there seem to be a lot of advantages,museums are still hesitant when it comes down toprocuring a DAMS. Partly because the director orsenior curator is difficult to convince, says Stevenson.‘He or she is often not aware of the possibilities andtends to view a DAMS as yet another collectionmanagement system, as I mentioned before.’Apart

DigiCULT 15

from lack of awareness there is also the problem offinance. Stevenson: ‘A lot of museums have difficul-ties in making ends meet. Extra income from spon-sors, for instance, is often linked to a certain collec-tion or exhibition; you cannot use it for infrastruc-ture.The budget itself often does not have room forthis type of investment as it is in most museumsdetermined on a yearly basis.’

Still, Stevenson thinks it is important to develop amanagement system for digital assets. ‘It does nothave to be a fully-fledged, all-in-one system, but wehave to get started. It is too important to let it getstuck in between a rock and a hard place, i.e. theneed for further development and the lack offunds.’

16 DigiCULT

Acultural heritage organisation’s ability to harvest,re-use and realise the value of its assets, theDigiCULT background paper postulated, ‘will

only ever be as good as the mechanisms that it can put inplace for storing and retrieving assets from the media vault’.

Meeting that challenge was the task a dozenEuropean experts set for themselves at the Digi-CULT Forum in the modern north-west Germancity of Essen.They work at some of the largest

DIGICULT EXPERTS UNRAVELTHE HYPE OF DIGITAL ASSETMANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

By Michael Steemson

cultural institutions in Europe with huge assets.Some have digitised images of hundreds of thousandsof these assets.The problem: How to exploit them?

Should they take a lesson from one-time Cockneycostermonger, Sir Jack Cohen, who founded Britain’stop Tesco supermarkets on his 1950s barrow-boyphilosophy?: ‘Pile it high, sell it cheap!’ Should they,perhaps, take a tip from US oil baron J. Paul Getty’soft-quoted serendipity for success?: ‘Rise early, workhard, strike oil.’ Or, seriously now, could they findthe Euro lodestone with the new millennium’sDigital Asset Management Systems (DAMS) tech-nology?

This seemed to provide the answer, and the EssenTwelve - scholars, museologists, engineers and tech-nicians - met in a round-table workshop during theSeptember 2002 European AIIM Conference to dis-sect the problem with one among them, the manwho coined the term almost a decade ago, MichaelMoon, President and Chief Executive of hisCalifornian Silicon Valley research consultancy,Gistics Incorporated.

They were far from unanimous in their apprecia-tion of the technology. One said positively:‘If we don’tjump on the bandwagon, we are going to miss a greatopportunity.’ But, further round the table, anotherthought: ‘When it comes to the curators, I am criti-cal of a DAMS.’ Next to him, another museum mananguished: ‘Prices of DAMS I have seen are unafford-able.’ Mr Moon had quite some convincing to do.

DigiCULT 17

Digital Cultural Heritage Objects. These experts thoughtmuch more needed to be done before the problemsthey had been set could be resolved.

In autumnal Essen, however, the subject of debatewas more strategic. Moderator Michael Moon, scholar-ly in half-moon glasses, opened the debate with a keypresentation defining the scope of the discussions.

He recalled finding the progenitor of DAMS - asmall multimedia product by a company called Aldusthat was subsequently bought by Adobe, he thought.‘We found that users were getting extraordinary pro-ductivity gains as a function of reusing media compo-nents’, he told the forum.‘One particular project, onthe Boeing 777, documented 1,470 engineering hourssaved by being able to find and reuse pre-existing dra-wings for documentation.’

Mr Moon and his firm, publishers of executive bestpractice papers on the rapid deployment of technology,were gripped.As a user and student of technology, hesaid:‘I tend to have a very practical focus:What’s in itfor me, what kind of economic returns do we get forthis?’ Now he saw digital asset management at the coreof companies’ processes to ‘find and serve customersand ultimately set up self-service satisfaction’.

DEFINING THE SCOPE

Digits with commercial value‘The term digital assets implies that digital files

have commercial value - that another party willpay to own or use them.These assets also havevalue as process agents that reduce process cycletimes and external purchases while ultimatelyincreasing revenue and profit per employee.’

Digital Asset Management Market Report 2002brochure, Gistics Inc., Emeryville, CA. 2002

URL: www.gistics.com/

The forum was the second in a series of seven plan-ned over two and a half years by DigiCULT, theEuropean Union’s technology watchdog for the cultu-ral and scientific heritage sector.

The first forum, consisting of another nine NorthernHemisphere experts and held four months earlier inBarcelona, considered the Integrity and Authenticity of

THE 18-MONTH RULE

Next, a little lesson in bookkeeping practice:How to define an asset.Apply commonlyheld accountancy rules, said Mr Moon:

‘Things that have real value meet the general accoun-ting practice for what constitutes an asset … this objecthas reuse for greater than eighteen months. If you canshow reuse greater than eighteen months you can linkthe object to its development costs and re-express it asa revenue event, a sale, or a discrete cost saving.’

A question came from bearded James Stevenson,Manager of the Photographic Department at London’svast Victoria and Albert Museum. He doubted that the18-months rule applied to cultural heritage institutions‘because we can go back 150 years and reuse thingswith a valued use for today’.

True, said Moderator Moon.There was obviously agulf between commercial and heritage enterprise sinceany object that came into an institution became anartefact. He went on:‘It nonetheless has economicvalue and, while it may not necessarily be reflected inthe balance sheets of the institution, the principle ofunlocking value remains the same. Ultimately, it isabout increasing sponsorship, licensing revenues, pro-duct sales and other sorts of academicals that help inhealthy revenue support.’

18 DigiCULT

So, that’s an asset. Now, what digital assets docultural heritage institutions have? Mainly, saidMr Moon:

° media assets such as photographs;° editorial assets - text, in other words, and° information assets in catalogue and marketing

material, mailing lists and development of education curricula and learning objects.What about knowledge assets?, asked Mr Yannis

Ioannidis, professor in the Department of Informaticsand Telecommunications at the University of Athens.Shouldn’t they be among the main items, too?

More difficult, said Mr Moon. One could make acase for capitalising knowledge assets, but it involved‘a particularly onerous, difficult and painful processcalled “activity based” accounting’. Most organisati-ons were ‘nowhere near that as an approach or disci-pline’.

Digital assets largely comprised metadata derivedfrom capture and creation tools, business rights, com-missions, accounting data, purchase and licencedetails, modification and use indicators. Mr Moondescribed an ‘extraordinary’ XML-based metadatastandard platform from Adobe called XMP(eXtensible Metadata Platform) that stored metadatain the digital file header, allowing the transfer of file and metadata together from one user system toanother. It had an ‘aliasing’ function allowing incom-patible metadata fields to be synchronised betweenstandards. He enthused: ‘And as someone from theIT world will know, synchronisation of metadata isthe rat-hole of the universe.’

Within a digital asset could be many versions of an original ‘digital master’. From a digitised picturewould come renditions in low, medium and highresolution. Illustrators would use these in page design-ing, the medium resolution for placing and editingan image, the high resolution for printing, and thelow resolution for the Web. Similarly, text versionscould include documents in differing languages or a variety of wording, providing a file with multiplelayers for automatic or dynamic renditions on Webdisplays or just-in-time print functions.

How would cultural institutions use this? MrMoon specified exhibition promotions, cor-porate sponsorship and sales.As an example,

he went on:‘I was just at the Tate Modern in London:an exquisite, unbelievable exhibition of Picasso andMatisse. I saw the dialogue between Picasso andMatisse over a 30-year period.They didn’t talk, theypainted, and they would send each other paintings.You could see how each affected the other in pro-found and really startling ways, ways you cannot real-ly appreciate until you see the paintings side by side.’

He said that a DAM system would allow the TateModern to print posters rendered dynamically. ‘So Icould simply go down into the gallery kiosk and say“give me one of those”. It could be a straight print-out or it could be turned into a poster with the TateModern logo or maybe with a picture of yourselfsuperimposed over a little corner.’The Web offeredsimilar dynamic sales possibilities to individuals orauthorised re-sellers with no need for huge stockinventories or physical logistical problems.

Some DAMS contained visual search technology,good for users who did not understand Boolean andsearch argument and for video or DVD searches.Workflow interfaces met the specific requirements ofsystem managers, media creators and editors and,finally, the consumers.

Keep in mind 1.: Mr Moon reminded the expertsthat, at some time in the future, institutions maywish to outsource some of the DAMS capabilitysuch as meta-tagging, digitisation or dynamic imagerendering. DAMS technical infrastructure shouldallow these and other possible process changes.

Keep in mind 2.: ‘The biggest, most difficult partof digital asset management is change management.How do we facilitate the formation of new beha-viours among individuals and, more importantly, ingroups and institutions not necessarily warm andaccommodating of change?’ he warned.

WHAT´S A DIGITAL ASSET?

Metadata to increase utility‘Metadata are becoming increasingly impor-

tant in all types of publishing. Documents con-taining metadata can greatly increase the utilityof managed assets in collaborative productionworkflows.’Adobe Systems Inc., San Jose, California www.adobe.com/products/xmp/

PICASSO AND MATISSE: AN EXAMPLE

What connection do cultural institutionsmake between their collections andpublishing? The question came from

Guy Hellier, the London representative of ArtesiaTechnology, a Rockville, Maryland, company thatbuilds digital asset management systems.

The V&A’s James Stevenson said the museum hadbeen publishing since its foundation in 1856. MostBritish museums had well-established publishingdepartments.The real problem was how to decidewhat to digitise next for publication. ‘We have thir-teen departments and a collecting policy that goesfrom toys to vacuum cleaners and encompassesRenaissance art. Each one has national importance.’

Michael Moon recommended a Website survey toidentify ‘what gets you in the door’ and ‘an uncom-mon level of courage to sacrifice sacred cows’ inorder to find a single answer.

£10,000 from its digital store and the pressure formore and more images and metadata was intense.‘But what there isn’t is a mechanism for us to do thatas an institution on a rational basis.’

Harking back to his earlier warning about thehazards of change management, Mr Moon said:‘Deployment of an asset management system is notabout making the curator’s job easier but deployingtechnology to move the institution forward.’ One ofa DAMS’ attributes was analysis of asset usage.Act-ivity data showed where users put the true value ofthe collection - information of interest to all aninstitution’s stakeholders.

Friso Visser had another angle. He is a museologistworking for the international management consul-tancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the cultural sectorof the European Union’s Information SocietyTechnologies (IST) programme.

He said: ‘Accountability is more and more an issuefor cultural institutes: the amount of visitors comingthrough the door; the number of Web visitors; theexhibitions produced, or leaflets, brochures, schoolprogrammes, etc. - the “performance” of an institute.DAM systems can be used to confront these. I wouldthink you are looking at something that increases thevalue of the assets within the institution.’

DigiCULT 19

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

More with Metadata‘An effective Digital Asset Management strategy

can actually increase the value of your digital assetsby capturing detailed information (metadata)about the asset.Assets are important, but theinformation about an asset makes it useful (andre-useful) to the organisation.’

What is DAM?,Artesia Technologies,Rockville, Maryland, US www.artesia.com/what_dam.html

It’s not as simple as that, said Graham Higley. Heis the new (by only three months) head of ITand libraries in London’s mighty Natural History

Museum, a Mecca for all small boys fascinated bydinosaurs.The museum’s life-size moving, breathing,roaring model of a Cretaceous tyrannosaurus rex makesthe faint-hearted quail and timid tots shriek.Theinstitution has 100 million other artefacts, includinga million books and half a million art works, but hasdigitised only one per cent of them.

‘We know precisely what gets people in thedoors’, said Mr Higley, ‘Dinosaurs! We have done thedinosaurs.We have more rubber dinosaurs than youcan shake a stick at.That’s the one per cent. But ourpurpose is to expose the entire collection – by atleast another ten to twenty per cent over the nextfive years.’The museum probably earned up to

DINOSAUR ASSET MANAGEMENT

HIGH CULTURE, POPULAR CULTURE

It took a forthright Italian university IT academicand the Essen Forum’s only woman member tocut to the bone of the issue. ‘Museums are often

not created for the visitor.They are created for thecurators. Putting them in that end-user perspective iscrucial’, said Franca Garzotto, a multimedia authorityat the electronics and information department of thePolytecnico di Milano, the largest engineering uni-versity in Europe.

She was troubled by the amounts of time andmoney spent by cultural institutions on classifying,cataloguing, digitising, preserving and storing.TheItalian Government spent millions of euro on them,she said, adding: ‘The issue, however, is making thiscontent of value to the citizens and consumer. Ithink it is important to define and develop exploita-tion models for the digital content. Instead of tryingto digitise everything, let’s digitise those sections thatcan be useful for a broader audience.’

All of which underscored a deep, little-discussedissue, said Michael Moon: ‘Most collections representhigh culture, the patronage of kings, popes and bish-ops who commissioned most of these high culturethings. On the other hand, we have a mass, popular,

20 DigiCULT

Franca Garzotto hit the Forum with another‘provocative’ question, this time to vendors:Whyshould a cultural institution switch from its

familiar, general purpose system such as Oracle infavour of a system that may not survive? What wouldhappen to the content?

Artesia’s Guy Hellier reassured the experts that mostproducts were based on commonly available databasesystems and should store metadata and related infor-mation in an open way.

Ms Garzotto pressed further: ‘You are saying thatthere is no risk of portability problems in the case of evolution of technology - that these systems areopen enough to be integrated and to be replaced byother software.’

Yes, said Mr Hellier. DAMS represented no morerisk than basic level components.The risk equationhad to be calculated against the cost of building andmaintaining DAMS functions into basic components.

German vendor Stefan Schneider, from theresearch department of information systemmakers Tecmath AG, agreed: ‘An ordinary

database has no workflow support, such as browsingor a Web interface.You have to program all thisyourself.’ But he had a bigger problem. Did museums really know how to use workflow processes? His company’s preliminary analyses often revealedweaknesses in museums’ existing workflow practices.‘You cannot replace a bad analogue workflow with a digital one’, he said. ‘A DAMS could create morechaos than before.’

Mr Moon thought the problem existed acrossindustry but DAMS technology offered much sup-port.The problem unique to the cultural heritagesector was, perhaps, what he called the ‘super users’,the curators who required very specific retrieval

PORTABILITY RISKS

WORKFLOW FAILINGS

COST OF DAM SYSTEMS

All of which raised the question of why, if theydid not already have it, did museums need allthat workflow functionality. Norbert Kanter,

who works for the German branch of the Swiss systemmakers zetcom AG, wondered why existing collec-tion management systems could not continue doingthe job they had done for the past ten or 12 years.

Natural History Museum manager Graham Higleywas ‘struggling’ with the same thought.Why not juststrap a digitising ‘carbuncle’ on the side of an existingcollection management system? It could be enoughto tide a system over until DAMS technology hadproved itself and become cheaper.

Franca Garzotto cut to the core again and askedbluntly: ‘What does a DAMS cost?’

Michael Moon had the figures in his head:° $100 to $5,000: Canto Cumulus1, Extensis

Portfolio22 and Filemaker Pro3 all did excellent jobsfor small projects.

° $25,000 to $50,000: ‘A class of DAMS, which are basically internal systems.They are not really Webified.’

° $100,000 to $250,000:Artesia4 and Tecmath5 but ‘two to three million dollars to get it fully distri-buted and replicated throughout the enterprise’.Lower-cost systems were typically bought by

departments in creative services using Quark,Illustrator, PhotoShop, etc., said Mr Moon, althoughhe knew of a $2 billion publishing firm that ran itsentire business off Canto and Filemaker. Second-tiersystems were usually found in the printing business.The top level was for complex systems that had tointegrate with existing architecture.

Mr Stevenson asked which cultural institutionswere already using DAM systems. Members men-tioned the Male Clinic, US universities of Texas,Cornell and Stanford, the National Archives of theNetherlands, the Vatican, Sony Pictures, Boston broadcaster WGBH, the UK’s Courtaulds Institute,Readers Digest, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Tele-phone Corporation), the US National FootballLeague and New York multimedia publisher, MarthaStewart Living. Athenian Professor Ioannidis com-mented, dryly: ‘I don’t hear any museums in there!’Mr Hellier identified a US museum, the FreedomForum’s ‘Newseum’ (www.newseum.org), which hadan archive on ‘the progression of print’.

1 Canto Cumulus,

www.canto.com2 Extensis Portfolio,

www.extensis.com/

portfolio/3 Filemaker Pro,

www.filemaker.com/

products/fm_home.html4 Artesia Technologies,

www.artesia.com5 Tecmath AG,

www.tecmath.de

entertainment-centred culture that is about produ-cing products that sell.You create a product to selland, if it doesn’t sell, it sucks!’

Compounding this was one other consideration:‘Senior executives are not motivated by opportunitybut by risk aversion. So, the way to motivate direc-tors to do the right thing is to have data that say hereis what works; here is what doesn’t work; here iswhat our customers want.’

requirements and access privileges.These requiredcareful study but could be met with standard datamodelling processes.

DigiCULT 21

DAMS Technology Reviews

Digital Asset Management:The Product Landscape‘Digital Asset Management has been around for a

decade or more, but it is only in the last couple ofyears that mainstream IT analysts and reporters havepaid much attention to it.’CMS Watch,August 2002www.cmswatch.com/Features/ProductWatch/FeaturedProduct/?feature_id=76

Refreshing Media Management: Coca-ColaTurns Archives Into Assets‘With a newly implemented DAM system, Coca-

Cola's Archive Department is bringing the firm'srich collection of graphics, video, audio, and text tocompany desktops worldwide.’Econtent magazine, May 2002 www.econtentmag.com/r7/2002/delancie5_02.html

Defining the DAM Thing: How DigitalAsset Management Works‘I have a saying I use in consulting:“Where the-

re's pain, there's gain”.And nothing suggests painlike having users try to discuss storing and sharingdigital information.’Emedia Live,August 2001 www.emedialive.com/r2/2001/doering8_01.html

Papers and articles covering basic issues of digital asset management

EC2 Incubator Project,Annenberg Center forCommunication, University of SouthernCalifornia’s Schools of Communications,Engineering and Cinema-Television.www.ec2.edu/final/dccenter/dam/index.html

The BBC ArchivesSo, what are the prospects and perspectives for

institutions and vendors?, Moderator Moon asked theTwelve.The Man from the BBC spoke first. RichardWright, from the Corporation’s multimedia archives,told the Forum that the institution had been wor-king on the technology since 1995. It created, storedand distributed cultural artefacts with digital techno-logy.

‘So, DAMS is a kind of must-have and the rest is

22 DigiCULT

THE FUTURE OF CULTURAL ASSETS strategy, implementation plans and budgets’, said MrWright. ‘We still have to operationally integrate ourlegacy metadata with the key frames, the proxies andthe browser to the desktop.That will be the bigjump for us.’

The Victoria and Albert MuseumVisibility is the major driver for the V&A, said

James Stevenson.The museum hoped to get twomillion visitors through its door this year, up from1.5 million last year.And there was a vast constituen-cy of people who never entered the grand, culturalpalace in London’s Royal Borough of Kensingtonand Chelsea.Although his department had 50,000digital images, only about 2,000 objects were on theinstitution’s Website.

‘I have spent three years writing papers trying toeducate the senior management that DAM is some-thing that we need as an institution’, he said. ‘It onlycomes home to them when you say I can’t do this orthat. I expect we will have a DAMS in the nexteighteen months.’

The Natural History MuseumGraham Higley’s priority was quickly to get large

amounts of collection data with which, hopefully, toraise income. He greatly wanted to improve themuseum’s Website, which was already very popularand won awards, but was not properly structured.

He said: ‘It needs a new content managementsystem that will link into both the collections mana-gement system and a digital asset managementsystem. So there is quite a big picture to paint there.’He added: ‘There are quite a lot of other things thatwe aspire to which need those platforms in place,things like collaborative research and a virtual expe-rience of the museum.’

zetcom AGVendor Norbert Kanter was curious to see how

the first museum in Germany would combine aDAMS with the information systems it already hadin place. ‘Unsolved problems are still the awareness of these products within the cultural field and theknowledge of how they can assist institutions’, hethought.

The Wildscreen TrustFunding was a big issue for the Wildscreen Trust in

its programme for digital TV recordings of all theworld’s endangered species, said digital archivist JohnLeedham.The project needed a DAMS, but it reliedon annual funding and ‘we cannot guarantee we willhave any more money after 2003’.

Artesia TechnologiesGuy Hellier, the London marketing chief for

Artesia systems, was encouraged that DAMS appea-red to be applicable to the cultural heritage arena.Once institutions found a way to apply them, DAMSwould help organisations to reach their consumerbase and give them greater exposure to the collec-tions, and to the knowledge held by curators. Hesaid: ‘I am convinced that curators are the valuablepeople resource.You need to be finding ways to getthem involved in reaching digital and physical visitorbases. DAMS will play a key part in creating productsto help you do that.’

So, the DAMS workshop in the vast Messe Essen,the city’s fine new convention centre, was over.Thetwelve experts went away, perhaps to the echoedwords of Germany’s great son, composer-conductor-meistersinger Richard Wagner, after a performance

of his Ring Cycle opera Die Götterdämmerung(Twilight of the Gods) in the late 1800s.

The ageing maestro, now filled with honour, toldhis audience: ‘Now you have seen what we can do.Now want it! And if you do, we will achieve an art.’

Michael Steemson,The Caldeson Consultancy,

www.caldeson.com

DigiCULT 23

24 DigiCULT

just selling cars.They were, for instance, alarge supplier of the World War II warmachinery. For many people GM cars are alsopart of their personal history.The beautifulthing is that GM has kept records ofits influence on American culture.The company’s media archivecontains a wealth of culturalinformation that is now made available for internaland external use.’The imagesin the Media Archive are areal asset for GM in the sensethat they also generate an annual income of severalmillions of dollars. Hellier: ‘One of the external usersis Mattel, the toy car producer.They have to have alicence to be able to use the images. So do otheroutside users.The DAMS that we implemented atGM can also be used for licences and rights mana-gement.’

One of the things that had to be solved was theaccessibility of the GM heritage. Hellier: ‘The peopleworking in the media archive had developed theirown vocabulary to categorise the images.A languageof 40,000 to 50,000 words they use to describe notonly the content of the image but also its atmo-sphere. For instance, the term “wow shot”, whichdescribes a real stunning picture. From this vocabu-lary of specialised users we developed a more genera-lised vocabulary for first-time users from outside theMedia Archive.’

Hellier acknowledges that, even if the board isconvinced of the usefulness of a DAMS, there is stillthe problem of funding.A comprehensive system likethe ones Artesia implements can cost anything bet-ween a half and a few million euros. For public insti-tutions like museums this might be quite a hurdle.Hellier: ‘In the DigiCULT Forum in Essen lastSeptember someone suggested the creation of a usergroup for DAMS. I think that is a very good idea.Auser group could help speed adoption, for instanceby developing standards for information storage andexchange.That would certainly help the vendors. Onthe other hand, the institutions could cut their cost,for instance by using a common platform with per-sonalised interfaces.Artesia has built such hostingplatforms, for instance for Getty Images, that are usedby a variety of customers.’

‘Digital Asset Management Systems(DAMS) can be of great value to theinstitutions that preserve our cultural

heritage.They can help them in managing theircollection in a structured way, but - and I think thisis even more important - they offer new possibilitiesto reach a wider audience.’Although he is Director,European Professional Services, for Artesia Techno-logies, one of the twelve vendors that sell compre-hensive DAMS, Guy Hellier is not your typical salesrep.Apart from being educated in engineering phy-sics, he really believes that DAMS can increase thepublic’s awareness of its cultural heritage and enhancethe ‘real’ experience.

At the moment Artesia is implementing a DAMSat Courtauld Institute of Art, digitising its superbcollection of art and architecture. Hellier still has alot of converting to do. Often curators are afraid thatmaking their collection available on the Internet willcost them ‘real’ visitors and hence money. Not onlythe fee the visitors pay, but also because the numberof visitors is an important criterion for governmentor sponsor funding.According to Hellier, there is noneed for cold feet. ‘On the contrary, I think thatmaking people aware via the Internet or other mediacan increase the number of visitors. By informingthem, you can even make their visit more rewarding,so that they come back to you.’

Artesia Technologies started in 1999 as a manage-ment buy-out of The Thomson Corporation(Toronto).The DAMS that had been developed forinternal use promised to have great potential forother companies and institutions dealing with richmedia like images, maps,Web pages and streamingvideo.According to Hellier, building a DAM soft-ware company was not part of Thomson’s corebusiness, so the internal project was put up for sale.It was bought by the people who had developed itwith venture backing from Warburg-Pincus. Hellierjoined the company from its start in 1999 and at thattime he became project leader of its ‘launching’ pro-ject, the Media Archive of General Motors.This wasa three-quarters of a million dollar project where thelargest chunk of money went into converting almosttwo terabyte of texts, images, both still and strea-ming, and sound into standard format.

Hellier: ‘GM has had, and still has, a tremendousimpact on life in the US, which is far bigger then

An interviewwith GuyHellier, ArtesiaTechnologies

by Joost vanKasteren

DAMS MAKE CULTURALHERITAGE MORE ACCESSIBLE

DigiCULT 25

A changing environment, and new ‘missions‘In the last ten to twelve years the responsibilities

and core tasks of museums and other holders of cul-tural heritage collections have changed and expandedsteadily.Their functioning has been transformedbecause of, for example, new financing models.Budgetary restrictions of the public hand havebrought about changes in the ownershipstructures.Visitors and users expect ever morespectacular exhibitions or customised servicesand, of course, the use of computers and net-works has brought about considerable changesin the working environment of cultural andscientific heritage institutions.

An ever tighter budgetary situation, coupled withrising expectations from sponsors and users, drivesthe need for more efficiency and productivity whichcould be enhanced using information technologies,networks and, in particular, the opportunities offeredby the Internet.To cover the costs of preserving andmaking accessible public collections as well as relatedscholarly and educational tasks, the institutions willneed to find new ways of marketing and valorisingtheir assets. One indicator of the impact of these new‘missions’ on the heritage organisations is the increa-sing deployment of databases in the management ofcollections as well as related information and pro-ducts, which today include not only texts and ima-ges, but also multimedia objects.

From collection management to institutionalmanagewareAt the beginning of the 1990s cultural heritage

institutions that could afford IT systems used themmainly for the administration and scholarly docu-mentation of their holdings.Today’s collection mana-gement systems not only provide many more func-tionalities, but can also be used to interlink the workof many departments. By integrating the informationproduced and exchanged, the classical collectionmanagement systems are developing into systems forthe management of the entire institution.They func-tion as information tools for all departments thatneed to look up object descriptions, digital images,status reports of restoration, preservation, lendings,licensing, educational material, articles and othercontextual material.Therefore, enhanced collection

management systems canbecome the most impor-

tant and valuable ‘asset’ of aheritage institution, besides

its collections.

Re-use,re-express,re-purpose

Today,major deve-lopers ofcollection

management systems in Europe (of which there arenot more than half a dozen) are striving to adapttheir systems to the networked working environmentof their customers.They open up and enhance theirsystems in such a way that customers can createinformation values beyond the level of simple dataentry fields.

The interlinking of previously isolated informationsupports in creating ‘contexts’ and the contexts them-selves generate the kind of information that is neededto be able to provide knowledge.An example of thisprocess is the linking of reference material to objectdescriptions, which enhances the documentary andscholarly value and makes the collection database alsomore interesting for educational uses.

Such rich, highly structured and interlinked infor-mation assets and digital objects foster re-use and re-purposing. Collection databases are already used togenerate dynamic Websites from a pool of always up-to-date information. Integrated image archives allowfor an efficient marketing of digitised objects, andclassroom material is generated ‘on demand’ fromdatabases as print or online versions.

Parallel worldsWhile in recent years DAMS have been developed

and primarily used in commercial areas such as themedia and other industries, CMS have evolved ‘inparallel’ in the traditionally not-for-profit culturalheritage sector. Both systems manage digital assetsand should lead to more efficiency, increased produc-tivity, and a higher quality of products and services.Yet, the two lines of systems have different focuspoints. CMS are concerned with the management of

By Norbert Kanter

DAMS VERSUS CMS?

ment or even an individual) as to which IT systemsare employed. In some cases it might even makesense to employ a DAMS alongside a typical muse-um CMS, and implement interfaces between the twosystems to avoid redundancy of data. But what willalso be decisive in the future regarding using a CMS,DAMS or both will be the size, the objectives andthe available budget of a museum.

Norbert Kanter, zetcom AG, www.museumplus.com

26 DigiCULT

collections and all other work related to collectionobjects – which means almost all departments of acultural heritage institution. In many cases, a CMSmaps the complete institutional structure, i.e. sup-ports executives, curators, registrars, restorators, lib-rary and educational staff and so forth.

In comparison, the potential application areas of aDAMS do not include all departments of a heritageinstitution, but are restricted to areas like mediamanagement and publishing.The strength of DAMSclearly lies in the management of digital assets (ima-ges, graphics, textual elements etc.), providing func-tions far beyond a classical CMS; worth noting, inparticular, is the powerful workflow managementthat DAMS provide in publishing.

Of course, there have been proposals and attemptsto develop CMS that allow for more enhanced work-flow management in heritage institutions, but so farthese attempts have not been successful in meetingthe requirements of these institutions. It should alsobe highlighted that in comparison with, for example,industrial organisations they tend to be lacking intheir definition and structuring of work processes.

In fact, there are some overlaps between DAMSand CMS, but nevertheless the differences are consi-derable.At present, and presumably in the future, ifmedia management and publishing are key to anorganisation, CMS cannot replace DAMS; but on theother hand it seems unlikely that DAMS will substi-tute for having a CMS in place.This is becauseDAMS support only some of the necessary functionsof a CMS, and in ways that are not customised forthe specific professional needs of museums.

CMS + DAMS = MMS ?Might the ideal management system for a museum

be one that is a CMS as well as a DAMS? Will theideal Museum Management System result from acombination of the two approaches? There are alrea-dy examples in which sub-functions of DAMS havebeen integrated into museum systems. One actualexample is the ‘Museums-Dokumentation-System’project in which the existing CMS - ‘MuseumPlus’ -of the State Museums of Berlin is enhanced withasset management functions that allow for operatinga commercial image archive. Its basis is the BildarchivPreußischer Kulturbesitz, and by integrating suchnew functions a high level of synergy is achieved as the digitised objects and related data sets can beinterlinked with information in other databases (e.g.about artists) of the Stiftung Preußischer Kultur-besitz.

Finally, as always with museums, it rests with theirindividual strategies (often that of a single depart-

to solve key issues as it has partnered with leadinglibraries to digitise and make accessible collections of complex digital objects (i.e. book images) - and thereby has developed into a leading service providerin this field of competency (www.octavo.com).

The case study will look into Octavo’s partnershipmodel and technology services, in particular howthey managed to put in place a high-performanceStorage Area Network and DAM system.

DigiCULT 27

CASE STUDY: CTAVO

Libraries, archives andmuseums that hold collec-tions of rare books and

manuscripts are facing a numberof conflicting goals.They want tomake their treasures accessible toscholars and students, and to usethem in exhibitions and othereducational programmes, while atthe same time assuring their secu-rity and long-term preservation.

Regarding the competingrequirements of preservation andaccess, digital technologies haveopened up new opportunities forthe cultural and scientific heritageinstitutions.Yet, the institutionsthemselves are often unsure abouttheir technology commitmentsand how to achieve high-quality,reliable and cost-effective solutions.The many chal-lenges they face in managing digital assets include forexample: size of high-resolution image files and multitude of uses for derivatives, metadata and cata-loguing information management, data storage and distribution systems, long-term preservation of digitalassets, overall system management, search and retrievalsystems, interfaces, and many more.

This case study describes how Octavo has managed

PRESERVATION ANDACCESS: COMING

TO TERMS WITHCONFLICTING GOALS

BRINGING THE CAPABILITIES OFADVANCED DIGITAL MEDIA TO RAREBOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS

By Guntram Geser

Octavo was founded in 1997 by engineer-entrepreneur and avid book collector, JohnWarnock (co-founder and CEO of Adobe

Systems).The company is based in Oakland, California,and has less than a dozen full-time employees, inclu-ding editors, imaging specialists, production managers,and ICT experts. It is led by Czeslaw (‘Chet’) JanGrycz, who joined Octavo as CEO and Publisher inFebruary 2000.

In the span of a few years Octavo has gained promi-nence through its acclaimed series of Digital Editionson CD-ROM of rare books and manuscripts.The listof digital publications includes, to name just a few,William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies(First Folio, London, 1623) from the Folger Shakes-peare Library;Andrea Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (Venice, 1570) from the Library of Con-gress; Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica(Basel, 1543) and Isaac Newton’s Opticks (London,1704) from the Warnock Library.A major just-com-pleted project is the digitisation of the Library ofCongress Biblia Latina, one of three perfect examples,known today, that were printed on vellum by JohannesGutenberg.

For its Digital Editions, Octavo forms partnershipswith cultural and scientific heritage institutions to makerare and highly valuable works affordable and accessibleto scholars, students, libraries, educators, bibliophiles, aswell as the everyday book lover. Prices for CD-ROMDigital Editions range from US$ 19 to 75.

Octavo’s Digital Editions come in both ‘trade’ and‘research’ versions.The trade editions contain high-quality digital images of each and every page of a selected rare book.These editions are enhanced withauthoritative editorial work, English translations (whenappropriate), customised navigation features, and avariety of print capabilities.They are designed to helpthe general reader understand the value and impor-tance of the rare volume that is featured in the edition.Octavo’s trade editions are provided as either one PDFfile or a set of interlinked PDF files, delivered on CD-ROM media. Some titles are also available with anoption to download directly to the desktop.The editi-ons present books from cover to cover, enabling usersto read the text or zoom in to see fine details.

Octavo’s research editions contain even higher-reso-lution images suitable for close magnification, enablingprecise study and analysis.These special research editi-ons are delivered in JPEG format and are shipped onmultiple CD-ROMs.The file size per image is approx-imately 120 MB of uncompressed image data, 24-bit

(millions) colour, with embedded ICC colour profileinformation.When a trade edition is available it is shipped, gratis, to any purchaser of a research edition.

One of the techniques pioneered by Octavo is ‘livetext’, an exhaustive species of metadata.‘Live text’ is acomplete electronic transcript of a work, invisiblyembedded word-for-word ‘behind’ the images of theoriginal. It allows readers to easily access and search theentire textual content without requiring the user to goback and forth between text and image.

Customers have access to and may purchase Octavoproducts via subscription, syndication, or pay-per-view.Through a royalty agreement, partner institutions enjoynew revenue streams by sharing in any profits genera-ted by Octavo through products or subscriptions basedon a participating library’s original works.A set of themaster source files is, as a matter of policy, given to thesponsoring library or institution. Octavo protects itsmaster data for the future by regularly migrating andrenewing storage media to ensure long life and stablesource files.

In an Agreement with Ebrary, a content consolida-tion company selling access to collections of electronictitles, Octavo makes its entire collection available as a‘digital rare book room’ which is offered on a subscrip-tion basis to libraries who sign up for Ebrary services.

In June 2001, Octavo and the Research LibrariesGroup (RLG) signed a Memorandum of Understan-ding under which RLG can receive a licence to distri-bute titles from the Octavo collection in its onlineCultural Materials database, and RLG member librarieswill enjoy cost savings on products and services provi-ded by Octavo. RLG is a not-for-profit membershipcorporation of over 160 universities, libraries, archives,historical societies, and other cultural and scientificheritage institutions.With Octavo, it will also jointlyinvestigate areas of common interest such as metadatastandards, digital image identification and searching,digital asset management, and issues of intellectual property rights.

Octavo has another relationship with the UK firm,Alecto Historical Editions (the publishers of very high-quality print facsimile editions), and expects to establisha digitisation laboratory in Europe during 2003.

28 DigiCULT

PARTNERSHIPS FOR DIGITAL EDITIONS

LEADERSHIP IN TECHNOLOGY SERVICE PROVISION

Octavo initially gained its position as a leadingpioneer in the development of qualitydigital publishing systems through designing

and implementing the most advanced and intriguing

new electronic presentation of digital images of rarebooks. In doing so, however, they had to developappropriate and cost-effective imaging systems, suit-able for a wide range of preservation activities.Octavo’s Digital Imaging Laboratory (ODIL) isbeing installed at leading libraries around the world,including the US Library of Congress and TheFolger Shakespeare Library. It is expected that workwill be performed by Octavo in collaboration withcollections at the British Library, and the VaticanLibrary. Under the auspices of the InternationalCentre for Information Management, Systems, andServices (ICIMSS), which is interested in establishinga digitisation curriculum for librarians, perhaps suchinstitutions as the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków,Poland, and other University and Municipal Librariesin Central and Eastern Europe can also benefit fromOctavo technologies.

Octavo’s Digital Imaging Laboratory

The ODIL is a customised capture and storage system,created to produce the high-quality master imagesappropriate for high-end digital preservation. Deriva-tive images for an array of publishing purposes (bothprint and Web-based) can easily be prepared from suchimages. Octavo’s imaging process is desig-ned specifi-cally for capturing images of rare books. Considerationis given to both their frailties and their unique aesthe-tic qualities. For example, custom-built book cradlesand special full-spectrum and cool lighting enable thecapture of fine details while protecting the books fromunnecessary exposure to light or heat. In presentingthe volumes for view, these processes result in an evenlylit and natural appearance inasmuch as the books aretypically presented as open double-page spreads withuntrimmed (uncropped) page edges visible.

The Laboratory includes:° Wide-body digital camera with optics suitable for

digital imaging° Ultra high-resolution (10,500 x 12,600 pixels),

tri-linear digital scanning system° Cool full-spectrum, non-fluorescent lighting° High-speed FireWire interface for camera system

and local disk storage° Multiprocessor Apple Power Macintosh G4 computer

for rapid image processing and camera management° 22-inch colour-managed LCD display° Image-handling and management software called

the ‘Online Capture System’ and other off-the-shelf software useful to the operator.

Optional customisation includes:° Scale Eight Media Port router connections to

secure, redundant storage° Local 1400 dpi archival pigment colour inkjet

proof printer° Flexible copy stand, adjustable camera stand, and

related furnitureSource: www.octavo.com/imaging/

Today, Octavo offers a comprehensive programmefocussing on imaging, storage, access, and innovativedigital solutions including:° needs analysis and planning of solutions in digital

preservation;° state-of-the-art digital capture/imaging services,

equipment, and expertise;° digital editions of rare works;° Web-based systems for the management and re-use

of archival quality images and digital surrogates;° electronic distribution services;° educational seminars and training programmes

with professional organisations and associations.

DigiCULT 29

Octavo’s services are available to client partners aspart of an on-site laboratory or service relationship,or separately as an independent service.Their accessservices include an e-commerce infrastructure andWeb-based database system that enables a range ofoptions for the private or public display of images.Images need not be created using Octavo’s DigitalImaging Laboratory but may also be produced usingexisting legacy systems. Pricing is based on storageneeds (per gigabyte) as well as on usage.

Throughout, Octavo’s guiding principle for selec-ting to work with partner libraries, however, is thequality and importance of the books in their specialcollections.These are Octavo’s main focus and thearea in which they have gained the most experience.Such volumes are also those that typically require theultra-high treatment offered by Octavo’s specializedequipment.

Scale Eight

Scale Eight provides file storage solutions based onDistributed Storage Software (DSS) technology. DSStechnology is delivered via the Scale Eight GlobalStorage Service and is incorporated in a family ofNetwork-Attached Storage (NAS) products.

Scale Eight is headquartered in San Francisco, withfacilities in the United States, Japan, and the UnitedKingdom. Since its formation, the company has been

30 DigiCULT

While expanding its list of products andservice relationships, producing an everincreasing number of high-resolution

digital masters and derivatives, Octavo realised thatthey could no longer manage the heavy storage anddigital asset management tasks.The digital masters,scanned at 10,500 by 12,600 pixels, are huge, consu-ming about 370 MB for two pages. Customers, inaddition, also demand derivatives such as low-resolu-tion thumbnails to post on Websites, close-up sec-tions of images, and PDF files of products. Keepingtrack of all these growing derivatives became proble-matic. Simply storing images on CD-ROMs was notenough; it was clear that getting them on hard drivesand providing access in-house as well as for partnerswould be a crucial next step.

Octavo first thought of building their own storagearea network, looking at what independent analystsin the field valued as a minimum investment of$500,000 for equipment and software licences, andthe need for at least three new full-time employeesto manage the system.1 This forced Octavo to lookoutside for a strategic partner, which they found inScale Eight, an innovative company in the area ofhigh-performance networked storage services.

The global storage infrastructure solution offeredby Scale Eight provided flexible and reliable mana-gement tools for approximately 80 per cent lessthan building and running a ‘home-grown’ system.

In May 2001, Octavo and Scale Eight signed anagreement in which Scale Eight will store and provi-

BUILDING A STORAGE NETWORK

1 Jade Boyd: Outsourced

Storage Helps Save Past.

In: InternetWeek.com,

October 8, 2001,

www.internetweek.com/

enterprise/enterprise

100801-1.htm2 Scale Eight: Octavo

Chooses Scale Eight to

Store and Protect Its

Library of Priceless

Documents. Press

Release, San Francisco,

May 21, 2001,

www.scaleeight.com/

news/pr_archives.php

de worldwide access to Octavo’s growing library ofdigitised rare books and manuscripts (digital mastersand derivatives); and Octavo will resell the ScaleEight service as the storage component of its DigitalImaging Laboratory, which is sold to heritage institu-tions in the United States and around the world.2

honoured by a variety of leading IT organisations asa leader in innovative storage technology develop-ment and high-performance service provision. ScaleEight has been serving global enterprises sinceOctober 2000, including The Microsoft Network,Viacom, and Fujitsu's PFU Group. Red Herringnamed Scale Eight ‘one of the 50 privately heldcompanies most likely to change the world’ in 2001and in 2002, and Computerworld named Scale Eighta Top 100 Emerging Company for 2002.

Scale Eight's Global Storage Service enables com-panies to create a virtual storage repository for sha-ring and distributing terabytes of file content via theWide Area Network. Its DSS technology is designedto run on industry standard hardware and operatingsystem platforms, enabling the company to leveragethe low costs and continual advances in industrystandard processors, I/O systems, and disk drives.

Scale Eight also develops network-attached storage(NAS) solutions that enable the creation of highlyscalable single-image NAS pools.The solutions con-sist of DSS software and standards-based hardware,pre-integrated and provided as a NAS system.

For more information, please visit www.s8.com.

Scale Eight’s system is accessed via a device in theOctavo LAN called the Global Storage Port.Throughthis ‘port’ users at Octavo can save and access imagesas if they were on a hard drive in the LAN. ByOctober 2001, Octavo had filled approximately threeterabytes, paying for storage in 30-MB increments.

Authorised Octavo customers have access througha password-protected Web browser. If a library ormuseum uses Octavo's imaging system to digitisepages of a book, a manuscript or map the system willautomatically save redundant and dynamically-mirro-red copies in Scale Eight's data centres in Britain,Japan,Virginia or California.The customer is able toaccess the digital objects as if they were on his or herown local network, with the Scale Eight’s servicealways providing a single system image to users,applications and administrators. Subsequently, whenOctavo relocated its offices, it also built a redundantstorage system for additional protection, augmentingthe Scale Eight service even further.

streamlines image definition and image capture.Thesystem is integrated with the camera and image pro-cessing software, so that much of the image capture,processing and archiving procedure is automated.TheOnline Capture System assists in organising and mana-ging the workflow by enabling information aboutthe project and the object to be recorded along withimage descriptions that become a Views List.

Once the Views List is assembled, the camera ope-rator is ready to begin imaging the object.The ope-rator stages the book, sets up the camera and light-ing, and checks the camera's settings. Next, an imagefrom the Views List is chosen.The appropriate OCSapplication launches the camera software and auto-matically loads it with the proper image name.Afterverifying the settings, the operator activates thecamera. Shortly thereafter, the new image appears on the computer display for inspection.

The image itself has been captured, sent to theremote storage facility and manipulated for quality,during which time JPEG thumbnails are prepared,sent to the Web server and displayed on the appro-priate Online Capture System page.The user (digitalcamera operator) does not concern himself/herselfwith this circuitous route; they simply benefit fromthe responsiveness of the system in helping themmanage the capture and management of numerousbook and page images.

After the operator reviews an image for quality,he/she can accept it by pressing a single key.Thisbegins another automated sequence that saves theuncompressed raw data along with a backup copy,and creates compressed versions for the onlinesystem.All data are cached locally, then uploaded tothe remote storage system. Updated status informa-tion is sent to the online system. Finally, the systemcues up the next image waiting to be captured.

While complex, this process takes less than a minute,during which time the operator can prepare the objectfor the next image.The operator continues in this waythrough the Views List, simply clicking capture andthen inspecting and accepting each image as he/sheprogresses through the entire digitisation process.

The goal of the Online Capture System is both tosimplify the challenging task of maintaining one’s‘place’ in the capture process. It also systematicallyencodes technical information along with the captureof images. ‘Metadata’ are so essential to the properretrieval of images (especially those that look so alikevisually) that its capture must be included in the nor-mal workflow to the greatest extent possible.Whenincorporated in such a fashion, the metadata becomeimmediately available for searching and retrieval,without necessitating additional labour or expense.

DigiCULT 31

At the heart of Octavo’s Digital ImagingLaboratory is its ‘Online Capture System’(OCS).This is Web-based software suite that

OCTAVO’S ONLINE CAPTURE SYSTEM

the initial capture stage. Each of Octavo’s camerasand scanning arrays is colour calibrated. Every bookis imaged along with a standard Macbeth Gertagcolour target.An ICC colour profile is embedded ineach of the archival files that are delivered to librarypartners as well as to customers.

Given the dissemination of ICC colour standardsthroughout the printing and reprographics industries,it is now possible to anticipate that a file digitised in2002 and printed out, say, in 2052 using yet-to-be-developed reproduction technologies might, in fact,bear close visual resemblance to the original.

Such a concept was unthinkable not too manyyears ago, yet now seems closer to reality, as thetechnological sophistication and understanding ofcolour becomes a more prominent feature in con-sumer products, digital cameras, software, and openstandards.

On its own Website, Octavo has explored visuali-sation technologies through its ‘book viewer’,which permits one to browse easily through pagesof a digitised volume.Their effort, in this, has beento provide easy navigation and quick-refresh images,while not eliminating the possibility of scanningthumbnail images or enlarged magnification ofdetailed images.

The browsing is provided as a convenience,though most users elect to purchase complete editi-ons from the site whch are burned onto CD–ROMmedia, and sent to them through the post. Down-loading of some titles is also possible, although -given the size of the finished files - this is not always practical.

Octavo, then, seems to be slowly and methodicallyputting together the building-blocks of what promi-ses to become an important collection of rare andprecious volumes – volumes to which most peoplewill not otherwise have easy access. In the doing, it isevolving a series of best-practices and managementsolutions from which there is much to learn.

The fact that Octavo understands (and wishes tounderstand better) the three-part aspect of digitalimage databases3, coupled with the fact that theyare temperamentally attuned to the library andmuseum community, makes them a unique andinteresting entrepreneurial enterprise: one thatcombines the best of altruism with a healthy doseof business grounding.

It also makes them an interesting potential part-ner for those libraries, archives and museums whopossess rare and precious books, and who are con-sidering outsourcing digital preservation activitiesrather than dealing with all the complexities themselves in-house.

Octavo’s Web-based Digital Asset ManagementSystem offers librarians and others involvedwith the project fast and reliable access to cap-

tured images and project information.This secure‘extranet area’ (which is identified as a URL providedto the library) is populated with each imaging project,allowing authorised team members to review a proofof each image, and facilitates magnification to seeincreased detail. In addition, team members can adddescriptions and annotations for each image, and organise cataloguing data.

The Asset Management System is XML-based,allowing custom mapping of descriptive data to thecentral database. Using XML facilitates sharing datawith external systems. It can be used with imagescaptured with the ODIL, as well as with digital assets imported from other sources.

Once digital content, including source image files,annotations, translations, cataloguing information orother metadata, is aggregated in the Asset Manage-ment System, it becomes the starting point for awide variety of derivative products.

Octavo can facilitate preparation of content for avariety of distribution methods, both online and off-line, incorporating electronic commerce if required.Online access can start with a simple Web gallery ofimages or a collection of downloadable PDF files.Great potential exists for academic, scholarly andother collaborative work with the addition of toolsto create and share annotations, translations and com-mentary, along with indexing, and searching capabili-ties. Octavo is available to develop unique, customi-sed solutions for analysing, exploring and sharingcontent, and is currently engaged in such projectswith professors at the University of California atBerkeley, who include Octavo titles as primaryresources for class reading requirements.

Digital content can be repurposed for a variety ofother products.A few examples are multimedia CD-ROMs, video presentations, or printed facsimiles. Ifthere is a demand for such, Octavo has developed anetwork of specialist consultants and firms who canreadily use the original images as components in thedevelopment of such extended products.

An important area of research and experimen-tation for Octavo is faithful colour calibrationand management. Colour controls begin at

32 DigiCULT

SHARING AND EXPLOITING DIGITAL CONTENT

TOWARDS THE DIGITAL FUTURE OF RAREBOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS

3 The three-part aspect

of digital image databases:

(1) Ingest or capture of

images, with all that en-

tails concerning protec-

tion, authenticity, and

faithfulness to the

original printed works.

(2) Digital Assets Manage-

ment, with it’s complex

relationship of ‘parent’

images to their derivative

‘children’, the necessary

incorporation of metadata

and textual identifier.

(3) Output and publishing

potentialities, with specific

requirements for visualisa-

tion, colour management,

and navigation.

DigiCULT 33

The aim of this case study is to illustrate thecentral role of a DAMS in building an onlinelearning resource around collections of paintings, drawings and photographs held atthe Courtauld Institute of Art. It builds onmaterial provided by the Courtauld Instituteon their Art and Architecture project, andgives an overview of the production processfor the central repository of digital objects. Atpresent, the Art and Architecture project is inmonth eleven of an initial two-year phase, andhas been in full production mode for fivemonths. For this step, we approached the project director, Giles O'Bryen, to provide theDigiCULT community with a summary of lessons learnt.

CASE STUDY: COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ARTART AND ARCHITECTUREPROJECT

By Guntram Geser

The images in this case study show the Vranov Castle in north east Slovakia,

which serves as an example for the project’s metadata schema for images

from the Conway Library.

The Courtauld Institute of Art, founded in1932, is the major centre in Britain for thestudy of the history of Western art, and is one

of the premier art historical institutes in the world(www.courtauld.ac.uk).1 Since 1990, the CourtauldInstitute and its gallery have occupied the Strand blockof Somerset House in London.2 Highlights of theInstitute are its world-renowned collection of Impres-sionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and theConway Photographic Library comprising over a mil-lion images of architecture, sculpture, medieval pain-tings, and architectural drawings and manuscripts. Noother archive has a comparable documentation of theartistic heritage of the West over medium, time andplace.

The Courtauld Institute is a College of the FederalUniversity of London. It has a teaching staff of thirty(including six conservation teachers), who specialise ina broad spectrum of the arts and architecture of theWestern world from classical antiquity to the presentday.Approximately 400 art history students are cur-rently at the Institute: one third are taking postgraduatecourses, one third are engaged in research at PhD level,and one third are undergraduates. Following the retire-ment of Professor Eric Fernie at year’s end 2002, thenew Director will be James Cuno, Professor of Historyof Art and Architecture, Harvard University, andDirector of the Harvard University Art Museums.3

ticular subject.The sta-ted aim of the Art andArchitecture project is‘to stimulate and satisfycuriosity in the historyof art amongst as widean audience as possible’.The team will build adatabase with over40,000 searchable ima-ges from the CourtauldInstitute’s collectionsand library holdings, andpresent them via a rich-ly functional Web plat-form, which will be freeto all users.The full fea-ture set has yet to bedefined in detail, but thesite aims to encourageusers by providing manydifferent ways into andpaths through thecollections, includingeasy and precise searchcapabilities, subjectkeyword browsing andlink traversal.As well asthe images themselves,the platform will cap-ture the expertise ofCourtauld staff in theinterpretation of arthistory, through storiesand features, presentati-ons and online debates.A further section of thesite will concentrate onuser-generated material,encouraging contributions from individuals, instituti-ons, clubs and societies of all kinds.

34 DigiCULT

COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ART

In June 2001, the New Opportunities Fund (NOF)(www.nof.org.uk) awarded the Courtauld Institutea one million pound grant for its Art and Archi-

tecture project.4 Of the 154 digitisation projects funded by NOF, the Courtauld’s award is the largestmade to a university, and the largest in support of thevisual arts.5 The set-up phase of the project will runfor two years; there is a commitment to keep the resul-ting online resources up and running for a furtherthree years; and of course it is anticipated that Art andArchitecture will become a permanent and essentialfeature of the Courtauld Institute’s life as a centre forart historical studies.Art and Architecture employsseven full-time staff, with a further five on part-timesecondment from the Institute. NOF supports thecreation of digital learning resources for ‘lifelong lear-ners’, who could be anyone from primary and secon-dary schoolchildren to students, teachers and acade-mics, as well as people with a special passion for a par-

THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE PROJECT

BUILDING A CENTRAL DIGITAL REPOSITORY

Although the specific commitment to NOF isto produce a Web resource, it was clear toProject Director Giles O’Bryen, whose back-

ground is in content management for commercialbook and magazine publishers, that this was an oppor-tunity to take a broader view of the value of digitisedcontent.‘The future of services delivered to desktop

1 British Council:

Courtauld Institute of Art -

Overview of the institution

(2000), www.britishcouncil.

org/eis/profiles/ecs00108/2 See the Courtauld section in

the Somerset House virtual

tour:www.somerset-house.

org.uk/virtual/courtauld.html3 James Cuno ends 11-year

tenure: HUAM director is

appointed to Courtauld

Institute. In: Harvard

University Gazette, June 13,

2002, www.news.harvard.

edu/gazette/2002/06.13/

05-cuno.html4 NOF: www.nof-digitise.org

(see: Project grants)

DigiCULT 35

computers via Web brow-sers is far from certain’,he points out,‘but whatwe do know is that digi-tal content is here tostay: content now has tobe in bits and bytesbefore it can be deploy-ed in any media, inclu-ding print’. For that rea-son, a digital asset mana-gement system (DAMS)which allows for thecreation, storage andmanagement of objectsand associated metadataindependently of anymedia or platform onwhich they might subse-quently be deployed see-med like a better long-term bet than a Web-oriented system.‘Weknew that a Web contentmanagement systemwould deliver exactlywhat we wanted… butnot much else.TheDAMS gives us a power-ful back-end infrastruc-ture for all kinds ofdeployment and distri-bution.Whatever thedigital future brings, theCourtauld will be readyfor it.’

The CourtauldInstitute uses a digitalasset management

system,Artesia’s TEAMS (www.artesia.com), allied toan Oracle database.TEAMS is widely used in thecommercial media industry, but the Courtauld Instituteis its first customer in the heritage sector (although ithas also been chosen by the Freedom Forum for its‘Newseum’ [www.newseum.org] to provide access totheir vast journalism history archive and to developinteractive multimedia exhibits for their new museumbuilding scheduled to open in Washington, DC, in20066). Other DAMS suppliers considered during theproposal phase for the Art and Architecture projectwere Bulldog (since bought up by Documentum) andPicdar.The cost of software licences, installation, confi-guration and training was in the order of £80,000.Thekey role of TEAMS is to support the creation (or

Images from the Conway Library have not beensystematically catalogued before, so the first chal-lenge was to develop a metadata schema capable of

capturing precisely what appears in a Conway image.Given the range of material in the archive, this was anintellectually stimulating exercise, the subject of manylong and sometimes heated discussions.A photographmight seem a relatively easy item to catalogue: not so.Consider the example of a set of images of VranovCastle in north east Slovakia. It was originally con-structed in the eleventh century, then re-built in theseventeenth. In the residential wing is a magnificentdecorated room,The Hall of the Ancestors, created bythe architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, withdecorations by the artist Johann Michael Rottmayr; itcontains much fine sculpture, including The Statue ofan Althan Family Ancestor by Tobias Kracker, comple-ted c. 1795.7 It will be clear from even this briefdescription that Vranov Castle has to be catalogued forwhat it is: a complex portmanteau of architecture,sculpture and painting created and assembled overmany centuries, which embraces many different kindsof relationships - for instance, the relationship betweenthe castle and its various wings, the castle and its prin-cipal rooms, the rooms and the paintings that decoratethem, and the items of sculpture that have been createdor collected there. Conway images could naturallydepict one or a number of these items, any of whichcould be the intended target of an online search, andall of which must therefore be individually catalogued.

Finally, the photograph may have many kinds ofvalue in its own right: it may (and many Conway ima-ges do) show an object or building prior to restoration,or even destruction; it may be a nineteenth-centuryprint, of particular interest to students of photography;it may, especially if it contains depictions of people,have value to the student of social history; and of course it may be a work of art in its own right.

The team at the Courtauld elected to make a distinc-tion between objects and images of those objects, withspecific items of information stored against each, andthe two sets of records linked within the DAMS.Thishas the obvious but important benefit that a building isonly ever catalogued once as a building, no matter how

SCHEMA DEVELOPMENT

‘ingest’), management, and ultimately export of theever-growing repository of images and text.Particularly critical to these processes is its flexiblehandling of metadata and links, and its ability to importa thesaurus to ensure the consistency and integrity ofthe cataloguing effort.

5 Tom Bilson:Art and

Architecture. In: Courtauld

Institute of Art Newsletter,

Issue no. 12,Autumn 2001,

www.courtauld.ac.uk

(see News)6 Artesia: Freedom Forum

Taps Artesia Technologies to

Create Multimedia Library

Showcasing the History of

Journalism (April 8, 2002),

www.artesia.com/pr/

freedom_forum.html7 Giles O’Bryen points

out that the example of

Vranov Castle was discover-

ed by a search on the term

‘oval’ - the shape of The

Hall of the Ancestors.

Good quality cataloguing is always scrupulouslyfaithful to the nature of the material beingcatalogued; it is also scrupulously consistent.

Although search algorithms and associated lookup tablesare now smart enough to handle most common variantsin spelling and can truncate words to their grammaticalroutes efficiently enough, they cannot manage variationsin the naming of fourteenth-century Italian artists, andare unlikely to appreciate that, where the term ‘mona-stery’ is entered as a search term, the user would like tosee pictures of friaries too.The NOF team appreciatedthat, with such a wide range of material to catalogueand up to five people working at once, they needed athesaurus to enforce consistency right from the start.

A key feature of TEAMS is the ability to import a

The schema was settled and the thesauri wereinstalled by the end of June 2002, and assetrecord creation began in earnest the following

month.There are two distinct workflows to cater forimages generated internally and out of house.

The Gallery drawings collection is too valuable toleave the secured area of Somerset House, so an inter-nal digital capture rig has been set up.The photogra-

36 DigiCULT

THESAURI

IMAGE HANDLING

many images of it are included in the collection; andindividual images can be catalogued further to indicate,for instance, that the specific features they depict have adifferent origin.To manage the relationships betweenobjects, the cataloguers use the TEAMS function thatallows links to be named: thus the link type ‘Objectcontains object’ indicates a specific relationship between,in this case, a great house and the works of sculpture itcontains. By using a defined number of such links, thenetwork of inter-relationships that constitute VranovCastle, for instance, can be mapped out with somedegree of precision.The cataloguers do not have toengage in gratuitous inner debate about whether analtar is part of a cathedral or an object in its own right:it is both, and the Courtauld schema allows it to becatalogued as such.That is not to say that every objectslides neatly into place: cataloguing is a method of classification, and is inevitably full of tricky choices.But at least the intellectual effort that is going into thework reflects challenges thrown up by the nature ofthe images and objects themselves, and not by systemlimitations or an inappropriately restrictive schema.

Once the schema had been settled and agreed, thetechnical manager on the project implemented it within TEAMS as a set of forms and options for cata-loguers to use.The project has separate schemas forConway images and paintings and drawings from theCourtauld Gallery collections, which in structuralterms are much simpler to catalogue.A strength ofTEAMS, as indeed of any properly designed DAMS, isthat configuration of the system to manage new kindsof digital assets is technically quite straightforward: thisis a long way from the kind of system where oneacquired a fixed set of fields and a text box to accom-modate anything that did not quite fit.

thesaurus and makeit available to users asa method of ensuringconsistency.Very fewfields in the schemaare keyed into direct-ly by the cataloguers:most are selected bysearching thesauri forthe appropriatename, place or term.The Art andArchitecture Teamuse the Getty origi-nated Art and Archi-tecture (AAT), Union List of Artists’ Names (ULAN),and Thesaurus of Geographical Names (TGN) thesauri, supplemented by the Thesaurus of GraphicalMaterials and Library of Congress listings for propernames.

With specific targets set by the funding body, thecataloguing team does not have time to complete ascholarly record for every object in the collection, andmany empty boxes are left for future initiatives.However, an important part of their work (as for anycataloguing of images) is the application of keywordsto images.AAT and TGM between them offer extre-mely rich and comprehensive listings of keywords.Thecataloguers use keywords to capture not so muchhistorical and cultural information, but specificallyvisual elements that will likely have very broad reco-gnition among the NOF user base. One of the mostfascinating aspects of the project is that entering searchterms such as ‘serpent’ or ‘war’ or ‘school’ is returningobjects that cut right across the spectrum of availablematerial.The ad hoc network of links between itemsthat such searches yield has never been seen before, andindeed could not have been created by any other method.By ‘cataloguing what they see’ in an image (as well aswhat they know or can find out about it), the Art andArchitecture team are adding a powerful and compel-ling new layer of meaning to the Conway archive.

DigiCULT 37

Giles O’Bryen always intended that the first yearof the project should be used to install a robusttechnology infrastructure, build the right sup-

plier relationships, and hire a team capable of at leastmeeting, and at best handsomely exceeding, the com-mitments to the funding body.The second year will befocussed on building a delivery platform capable ofconveying the richness of the assets and their associatedrecord sets to the target audience, and on integrating the

project with the wider activities of the CourtauldInstitute.The first of these goals will build upon theability of TEAMS to export pre-defined subsets ofassets and metadata in an XML framework that willgreatly simplify the business of delivering them online.

As for the second, one of the key reasons for investingin a DAMS has yet to be realised at the Courtauld.‘Iknow we can deliver the project this way’, says GilesO’Bryen,‘but next year I hope to demonstrate to theCourtauld that the capability created by the project hasa much wider application than that.Whenever anyoneanywhere in the Institute creates a digital asset, whethera PhD thesis or a publicity shot of the gallery, it couldbe stored in TEAMS.And whenever anyone needs tofind a Conway image or look at a drawing from theGallery Collection, I hope that one day it will be secondnature to search TEAMS first. For an institution thatdepends so entirely upon the availability of images andinformation about them, DAM is really a godsend, andin due course will be seen as an essential piece of goodhousekeeping for the Courtauld, and many other pla-ces like it.’

To conclude, below is a summary of what the Artand Architecture team has learnt so far about the benefits and challenges of using a DAM system:

Key benefits:° Capable of handling assets in all media.° Capable of storing assets independent of the

platform on which they will be delivered.° Full metadata handling, highly configurable for

different asset types.° Capable of importing a thesaurus and using it to

drive selection of metadata values.° Rich link handling, capable of expressing many

different kinds of relationships.° Browser client, minimises demands on the IT infra-

structure in what is essentially a low-tech environment.° Bulk import and automated metadata generation.° Robust security features.

Key Challenges:° Educating the Courtauld in the difference between

standalone, desktop databases intended for private use and full-scale client-server databases intended forpublic access.

° Keeping innovative technology simple, and not straying far from out-of-the-box functionality.

° Developing schemata that truly reflect the assets, andare therefore capable of satisfying both academic andgeneralist lines of enquiry.

° Fostering an environment in which the use of digitalassets is second nature (e.g. replacing slide caddies with Power-Point shows).

° Ensuring that interfaces to the DAM are always simple but effective.

CURRENT STATUS, AND LESSONS LEARNT

pher works throughthe collection, storinghigh-resolution versi-ons of each image onCD. Files are namedusing the uniqueaccession number foreach item, which allo-ws the digital imageto be married up withits pre-existing cataloguerecord. On import,TEAMS generatesinformation about the

capture conditions, resolution, dimensions and formatof the digital image, then creates three versions for usewithin the DAMS: a thumbnail, a medium-resolutionJPEG for quick access, and a Portable NetworkGraphics (PNG) file for more detailed inspection.Thecataloguers work through each image and record set,checking the information and adding new project-specific keywords.

Conway photographs are given a unique number,then sent to a third-party supplier (Ark Digital inLondon) for capture.The prints are returned alongwith the high-resolution digital file.Again, the digitalimage is imported and converted into the standard for-mats. Cataloguers work through folders of prints, checkthe number, locate the appropriate file and cataloguethe image, sometimes creating an object record first ifit does not already exist.The prints are then returnedto the shelves.

The CD sets are currently being archived separately,although at a future date the budget may allow pur-chase of a high-volume CD reading unit, which wouldenable near-line storage of the original high-resolutionfiles for internal use only: this would make it possiblefor users to access the original files from withinTEAMS, albeit access times would be many times slower than for the JPEG and PNG versions.

EC2 Incubator Project,Annenberg Center forCommunication, University of Southern California;offers a selection of papers and articles covering basic issues of DAM,www.ec2.edu/final/dccenter/dam/

EContent Magazine:Their ‘Research Centre’offers feature articles and business news on DigitalAsset Management,www.econtentmag.com/r7/

Doering, David: Defining the DAM Thing: HowDigital Asset Management Works (August 2001),www.emedialive.com/r2/2001/doering8_01.html

GISTICS Research: Digital Asset ManagementMarket Report 2002 brochure, Emeryville, CA. 2002,www.gistics.com

Lunt, Penny: Put Digital Assets On Call(November 2001),www.transformmag.com/db_area/archs/2001/11/tfm0111f1.shtml

Lynn, Chris: Digital Asset Management:The Product Landscape (August 2002),www.cmswatch.com/Features/ProductWatch/FeaturedProduct/?feature_id=76

Pennington,Adrian: Digital Asset Management:Ready Asset Go. In: Television Europe,Vol. 4, No. 8,2001, online accessible as a Northern Light SpecialCollection Document,http://special.northernlight.com/publishing/asset.htm#doc

Trippe, Bill: It’s a Digital World,After All: Optionsin Digital Asset Management (October 2001),www.econtentmag.com/r7/2001/trippe10_01.html

Verma, Gaurav et al. (VARBusiness): ProductReview: Content-Management Solutions (August2001), (provides an assessment of 14 vendor solutions),www.varbusiness.com/sections/technology/tech.asp?ArticleID=29295

38 DigiCULT

SELECTED LITERATURE

DigiCULT 39

THE ESSEN FORUM PARTICIPANTS

Franca GarzottoFranca Garzotto is Associate Professor of Com-

puter Science at the Department of Electronics andInformation, Politecnico di Milano. She has a Degreein Mathematics from the University of Padova (Italy)and a PhD in Computer Science from Politecnico diMilano. Her research interests are hypermedia andWeb design, usability,Web application quality, andcontext-aware applications, mainly in the domains ofcultural heritage and eLearning. Since 1988, she hasbeen involved in various European research projectsin the above fields. She has been tutorial chairand/or member of the technical programme com-mittee of several editions of many international con-ferences, including ACM Hypertext andHypermedia,ACM Multimedia, ICHIM,WebNet.She has served as Programme Co-Chair of: the FirstInternational Workshop on ‘Hypermedia Design‘(Montpellier, France, June 1995), the FirstInternational Workshop on ‘Evaluation and QualityCriteria for Multimedia Applications‘ (San Francisco,CA, November 1995), and ICHIM'01-InternationalConference on Informatics and Museums (Milan,Italy, September 2001). From 1997 to 1999, she wasEuropean Chair of SIG-WEB (the ACM SpecialInterest Group on Hypermedia & the Web).

Guy HellierGuy Hellier is the Director of European Opera-

tions for Artesia Technologies. He has been with ArtesiaTechnologies since its inception in June 1999, startingas a Project Manager in the Professional Servicesorganisation. One of Mr Hellier’s first projects wasthe General Motors Media Archive project, whichreplaced GM’s legacy asset repository with TEAMS.In this capacity, he was responsible for the businessprocess requirements, architecture decisions, dataconversion, and overall management of this effort toconvert over 500,000 photographs into TEAMS.

Soon thereafter, Mr Hellier was chosen to open upArtesia’s office in London and was promoted toDirector, European Professional Services. In thiscapacity, he built their European business and led

project efforts in the UK, Germany, Norway, Franceand the Netherlands. His European customers inclu-de Cappalens in Norway, EMAP in France, SonyMusic in Austria and Courtaulds Institute of Art inLondon. Prior to joining Artesia Technologies, MrHellier worked for The Harris Group as a technicalconsultant and later with Sallie Mae ServicingCorporation, where he served in numerous informa-tion technology positions culminating as AssistantVice President of Quality Assurance.

Graham Higley Graham Higley is Head of Information and

Library Systems of the Natural History Museum inLondon. Before this position Mr Higley workedwith The Carbon Trust (2001-2); was Director ofCommunications & Information at Investors inPeople UK (1999-2001); Operations Manager atBBC Information & Archives (1994-99), andInformation Resource Centre Manager at BritishTelecom (1990-4). In these positions his variousduties in particular revolved around developing newinformation systems and services, and change andprocess management, emphasising customer focus.

Yannis IoannidisYannis Ioannidis is currently Professor at the

Department of Informatics and Telecommunicationsof the University of Athens. He received his PhDdegree in Computer Science from the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley in 1986. He joined the facultyof the Computer Sciences Department of theUniversity of Wisconsin at Madison in 1986, wherehe became Professor before leaving in 1999. Hisresearch interests include database and informationsystems, scientific systems, digital libraries andhuman-computer interaction - topics on which hehas published over 50 articles in leading journals andconferences and holds two patents. Dr Ioannidis wasthe recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator(PYI) award in 1991, awarded by the President of theUnited States to the top young scientists in eachfield. He spoke on ‘Next-Generation Experiment

Management’ as the keynote speaker in theConference on Statistical and Scientific Databases(July 2000), and on ‘Databases and the Web’ as thekeynote speaker in the Workshop on Parallel andDistributed Processing (January 2000) and theConference on Web Age Information Management(July 2001). He has been a principal investigator inapproximately 20 research projects funded by variousgovernment agencies (USA, Europe, Greece) or pri-vate industry. Dr Ioannidis is currently AssociateEditor of five journals (Information Systems,VLDBJournal, Journal of Digital Libraries, Journal ofIntelligent Information Systems, and the electronicACM Digital Symposium Collection), and has beena member of the programme committees of over 40conferences, including three times as (co-)chair(VLDB, SSDBM and VDB). He has served on thereview board for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratoriesin Berkeley and on the Science Council of theNASA CESDIS Center for Excellence in Space Dataand Information Sciences.

Norbert KanterNorbert Kanter holds an MA in Art History and

Philosophy from the University of Bonn. In 1990, hestarted to work as a freelance at a museum softwareand database developer‘s. From 1991-1995 he washead of the IT department of the Federal Art andExhibition Hall of Germany. Since 1996 he has beenProject Manager for New Media at the same institu-tion and works as consultant and Internet producerfor different museums. Since July 2000 he has beenhead of zetcom AG in Berlin, a Swiss museumsystem developer with a broad installation basis for itsMuseum Management System ‘MuseumPlus’. Hewas responsible for the awarded Website of theGerman Federal Art and Exhibition Hall as well asWebsites for institutions like the Art Museum of thecity of Bonn. Mr Kanter has participated in the pro-duction of cultural CD-ROMs and worked onseveral multimedia projects, such as co-founder of‘die lockere gesellschaft – TRANSFUSIONEN’(www.transfusionen.de). Since 1992 he has been amember of ICOM/CIDOC, has participated in dif-ferent working groups and published on New Media

use in Museums. He is also an active member of theMCN (Museum Computer Network) and DMB(German Museum Association).

John LeedhamJohn Leedham is currently the IT Systems

Engineer for the ARKive Project. Previously he wasComputing Officer for the Oxford Text Archive,creating the Website and storage infrastructure for thedistribution of the 2000+ XML and other electronictexts collected over the last 25 years.The ARKiveproject collects moving images, stills, structured textand audio to create representative species profiles,initially for 1500 species, but in the longer term toencompass all the 39,000 endangered species world-wide.ARKive assets are digitised and stored at highresolution, along with verbose structured metadatabased on a variety of evolving standards. Personalinterests currently include defining the ARKiveapproach to knowledge capture, which is part of thenext phase of ARKive, and continuing to address thetechnical areas causing concern in the project.Theseinclude the deployment of the large-scale storageused by ARKive, and the construction of the Mana-ged Media Vault. Other interests include restoringMinis.

Michael MoonMr Moon co-founded Gistics Incorporated in

1987, and currently serves as its CEO and president.An internationally recognised research and consultingfirm, Gistics first identified digital asset managementin 1994 and has maintained an ongoing survey of itskey trends and developments. Present clients includeAdobe,Accenture,Apple, IBM, HP, KPMG andKodak. Prior to Gistics, Mr Moon worked at severalprominent Silicon Valley market research and adverti-sing firms including Electronic Trends Publications,Regis McKenna, and Lutat, Battey and Associates,and advised Altos Computer,Apple Computer,Hewlett-Packard, Intel, MicroFocus, Seagate Tech-nology, Shugart Associates, SofTech Microsystems,and other technology companies. Mr Moon holds adegree in Religious Studies from the University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz.

40 DigiCULT

DigiCULT 41

Stephan SchneiderAfter receiving his Diploma in Electrical

Engineering (1992) and a Master’s Degree inPhilosophy (1993) from the University of Stuttgart,Stephan Schneider joined the University of Cottbusin 1995. From 1995 to 2000 he set up and led aMultimedia Laboratory and was responsible forseveral international and EC-funded projects dealingwith multimedia applications. He received his PhDdegree in 2001 with a dissertation on the fractalcoding of speech signals. He joined tecmath AG as a project manager in the Research Department in2000, where he is responsible for the IST projectsAMICITIA (IST1999-20215) and PRIMAVERA(IST1999-20408). Both projects deal with the archi-ving and retrieval of large collections of audiovisualassets.

James StevensonJames Stevenson is the Photographic Manager at

the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He hasresponsibility for managing all image creation withinthe museum and the exploitation of those images viathe V&A Picture Library. He is currently involved ininstalling an asset management system for all themuseum‘s digital objects and a colour managementsystem for controlling image creation and their sub-sequent re-use. He has participated in the ARTISTE,ARCO and SCULPTEUR EU-funded IST projectsand the ‘Moving Here’ and ‘People Play’ UK-fundedNOF projects. James Stevenson was previously ChiefPhotographer at the National Maritime Museum atGreenwich, London. He is also Chairman of theAssociation for Historical and Fine Art Photography:www.ahfap.org.uk.

Friso VisserFriso Visser is senior consultant with PwC

Consulting in The Hague.As a museologist with spe-cial interest and rich experience in (R&D of) ICT,his activities relate to policies and strategic develop-ment in the area of Cultural Heritage. His specificinterest is with global and strategic developments ofICT and the role of public (sector) information, cul-ture and cultural institutions. Friso is one of the team

members of the DigiCULT Forum project. He isproject leader for the ICT benchmarking of mus-eums on behalf of the Dutch government. Duringthe past three years he has been seconded to theEuropean Commission in Luxembourg, involved inpolicies and strategy development for the CulturalHeritage Applications part of Key Action 3 of theIST programme (under the Fifth Framework pro-gramme for RTD). Before that he worked atMuseon in The Hague as head of the collectionsdepartment and project leader for several EuropeanICT museum projects.

Richard WrightRichard Wright was educated at the University of

Michigan, USA, and Southampton University, UK.He has the following University degrees: BSc inEngineering Science, 1967; MA in ComputerScience, 1972; and PhD in Digital Signal Processing(Speech Synthesis), 1988. He has worked in acous-tics, speech and signal processing for US and UKGovernment research laboratories (1968-76),University College London (1976-80, ResearchFellow), and the Royal National Institute for theDeaf (1980-90, Senior Scientist). He was ChiefDesigner at Cirrus Research from 1990-94 (speciali-sing in acoustical and audiometric instrumentation).Dr Wright has been Technology Manager, BBCArchives, since 1994.

Mirko ZimmerMirko Zimmer is employed as Consultant and

Software Engineer for the Content ManagementCompetence Center (CMCC) of BertelsmannmediaSystems, focussing on Content Managementand Digital Archiving Systems. Prior to BertelsmannmediaSystems, Mirko Zimmer completed his studiesat the Freie Universität Berlin, where he received aMaster of Arts degree in Historical and PoliticalSciences. During his studies Mirko worked for theDFG project ‘Dissertationen online’ at the HumboldtUniversität Berlin.

DigiCULT is an IST Support Measure (IST-2001-34898) to establish a regular technology watchthat monitors and analyses technological develop-ments relevant to and in the cultural and scientificheritage sector over the period of 30 months(03/2002-08/2004).

In order to encourage early take up, DigiCULTproduces seven Thematic Issues, three TechnologyWatch Reports, along with the newsletterDigiCULT.Info.

DigiCULT draws on the results of the strategicstudy ‘Technological Landscapes for Tomorrow’sCultural Economy (DigiCULT)’, that was initiatedby the European Commission, DG InformationSociety (Unit D2: Cultural Heritage Applications) in 2000 and completed in 2001.

Copies of the DigiCULT Full Report and Exe-cutive Summary can be downloaded or ordered atwww.digicult.info.

Project Consortium of DigiCULT:

Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft (Projectco-ordinator) http://www.salzburgresearch.atHATII – Humanities Advanced Technology andInformation Institute, University of Glasgowhttp://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/IBM Business Consulting Serviceshttp://www.ibm.com/

For further information on DigiCULT pleasecontact the team of the project co-ordinator:

Guntram Geserguntram.geser@salzburgresearch.atJohn Pereirajohn.pereira@salzburgresearch.atSalzburg Research ForschungsgesellschaftJakob-Haringer-Str. 5/IIIA - 5020 Salzburg Austria Phone: +43-(0)662-2288-521Fax: +43-(0)662-2288-222http://www.salzburgresearch.at

Project partners:

HATII - Humanities Advanced Technology andInformation InstituteUniversity of Glasgow Contact: Seamus Ross, s.ross@hatii.arts.gla.ac.ukIBM Business Consulting ServicesContact: Friso Visser, friso.visser@nl.ibm.com

The members of the DigiCULT SteeringCommittee are:

Philippe Avenier, Ministère de la culture et de lacommunication, FrancePaolo Buonora,Archivio di Stato di Roma, ItalyCostis Dallas, Critical Publics SA, GreeceBert Degenhart-Drenth,ADLIB InformationSystems BV,The NetherlandsPaul Fiander, BBC Information & Archives, UnitedKingdomPeter Holm Lindgaard, Library Manager, DenmarkErich J. Neuhold, Fraunhofer IPSI, GermanyBruce Royan, Concurrent Computing Ltd.,United Kingdom

42 DigiCULT

DIGICULT: PROJECT INFORMATION

This Thematic Issue is a product of theDigiCULT Project (IST-2001-34898).

Authors:

Guntram Geser, Salzburg ResearchNorbert Kanter, zetcom AGJoost van Kasteren, JournalistMichael Moon, GISTICS Inc.Seamus Ross, University of Glasgow, HATII Michael Steemson, Caldeson Consultancy

Images:

Robert Hooke: Micrographia. London, 1665 (on pp. 1, 4-5, 7, 12-13).Louis Renard: Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes, deDiverses Couleurs et Figures Extraordinaires ...Amsterdam, 1754(on pp. 15, 16, 18, 21, 22-23).Andreas Vesalius: De Humani Corporis Fabrica.Basel, 1543(on pp. 26, 27, 29, 30).Andreas Cellarius: Harmonia Macrocosmica.Amsterdam 1661(on pp. 38, 40-41, 42).© 2002 Octavo. Used with permission.

Varnov Castle(on pp. 33, 34-35, 36, 37).© 2002 Courtauld Institute of Art. Used with permission.

Portraits(on pp. 10, 14, 24, 25)© 2002 Salzburg Research, John Pereira

Graphics & Layout:

Peter Baldinger, Salzburg Research

ISSN 1726-3484Printed in Austria ©2002

DigiCULT Thematic Issue 1 builds on the firstDigiCULT Forum on ‘Integrity and Authenticity ofDigital Cultural Heritage Objects’ held in Barcelonaon May 6th, 2002, in the context of the DLM-Conference 2002.

DigiCULT Thematic Issue 2 builds on thesecond DigiCULT Forum held in Essen, Germany,on September 3rd, 2002, in the context of the AIIMConference @ DMS EXPO.

DigiCULT Thematic Issue 3 will follow thethird DigiCULT Forum on ‘XML:Towards an Inter-operable Semantic Web for Heritage Resources’, thatwill take place at Fraunhofer IPSI, Darmstadt,Germany on January 21st, 2003.

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DigiCULT 43

Business Consulting ServicesIBM Global Services

DigiCULT Consortium:

ISSN 1726-3484