Have a Digital Asset Management system?  Need a Digital Asset Management system?

Come and learn from a panel of your colleagues as we share what works, what doesn’t and what other options may be available for storing, organizing and/or sharing photos, graphics, videos and other digital assets.

There are a variety of different systems employed by units on campus. Hear about your colleagues’ experiences and share your own. You may identify some new solutions as we go!

Digital Asset Management Systems Panelists

  • Katie Costanza, Research, Communication & Program Manager, Center for Global Initiatives
  • Claire Cusick, Senior Content Manager, University Development Marketing
  • Gordon Palmer, Media Applications Analyst, School of Medicine Academic Technology Services
  • Ken Strayhorn, Web Manager, UNC Children’s Hospital
  • Rachell Underhill, Web and Information Systems Manager, The Graduate School

Digital Asset Management System PowerPoint Presentation (pdf)

Digital Asset Management System Resources

DAM Resources at UNC

UNC-Chapel Hill multimedia library (PhotoShelter/Libris)

UDO Marketing digital assets (Photoshelter/Libris)

HeelStream (Ensemble Video)

ibiblio:The Public’s Library and Digital Archive

School of Information and Library Science faculty under the Information Interaction area might have insights for both metadata and other organizational subjects.

Additional DAM Resources

Metadata resources

Recorded Discussion Notes

20181012 October Webmasters Meeting – Digital Asset Management Systems

Presenters

Notes – Presentation

  • Background
    • What is a digital asset?
      • Video, audio, logo, graphic files, spreadsheets, PDFs, pictures, CAD files
    • What is a DAMS
      • File sharing system with specialized tools for managing digital assets
      • Image/media specific tools
    • DAM Foundation
      • Criteria
        • Ingest
        • Secure
        • Store
        • Render
        • Enrich
        • Relate
        • Process
        • Find
        • Preview
        • Publish
      • DAMS at UNC (survey at UNC) – The uses
        • Mostly using a shared storage space
        • Many are using systems like Google Drive and Dropbox that are not actual DAMS, but work for collaboration
      • DAMS at UNC – The bad
        • Time-consuming
        • Unwieldy
        • Disorganized
        • Frustrating
      • DAMS at UNC – The wishes
        • Better viewing options, categorization
        • Sharing and external input
        • Student contribution
        • Storage capacity

Notes – Discussion

  • Katie Costanza – UNC Center for Global Initiative
    • Tools: SmugMug and Google Drive
    • Smug Mug
      • Features
        • Galleries
        • Permissions per Gallery
          • Share a gallery with password protections for visitors
        • Organization
          • Drag and drop/GUI interface
          • Collections
            • Organize images into multiple collections
          • Shows image previews making reviewing/finding images much easier
        • Tagging
          • Allows metadata to be associated with a digital asset
        • Cost is generally low
        • No worries about space limits given their current usage
        • Challenges
          • Managing the tagging system
          • Managing organization of massive amount of images
        • Works with Flickr and Lightroom
  • Claire Cusick – Senior Content Manager at University Development Marketing
    • Overview
      • Video producing is a large part of her job
      • Tools: External hard drives, Dropbox, PhotoShelter
      • Department is tasked with helping campus
        • Galleries and other media are open to campus community
        • Most galleries are available, but if you cannot get access, send email and they will work with you.
        • Open to sharing content, just need to reach out
      • They receive photos from various photographers on campus
    • Photo shelter
      • Only image assets, video costs more to manage
    • DropBox
      • Mostly for sharing video
      • 1TB option, ~$100 annual cost
    • External HDDs
      • ~$100 per
      • Sitting under her desk, and backups in safe
      • Challenging logistics to manage
    • We Transfer
      • If you don’t have Dropbox and don’t want to pay large money, use this
      • Can transfer files up to 2 GB
    • Asset Library
      • Has campaign assets and other useful media
  • Ken Strayhorn – School of Medicine
    • Overview
      • SoM always worries about security with HIPPA concerns
      • Issues with wild-west mentality with DAM processes
      • Needed to get things in a consistent, reliable shared space
      • Spend about 3K on the hardware and software to provide the service
      • Host on premises due to HIPPA
    • HeelStream
      • System created by SoM for asset management
      • Place to manage video assets
      • Place to go to upload videos into libraries
      • Can manage playlists
      • Can assign security rules to video or playlist
      • Shared as links, embedded into websites
    • Warpwire
      • ITS managed service
      • Developed by a company in Durham
      • Free for use at UNC
      • Upload content and it transcodes the content for streaming
        • Makes streaming easier
      • Can allow users to download videos
  • Gordon Palmer – Web Manager at UNC Children’s Hospital
    • Overview
      • Uses primarily PhotoShelter
      • Full professional account ~$300/yr.
      • Very happy with the product, worth the cost
    • PhotoShelter
      • Ad-hoc gallery on the fly, send URL and password to external user and they can view
      • Backend for performing analytics
        • Can see usage, downloads/access
      • ~4000 stock photos
      • Multiple stock galleries for organizing images by some criteria and sharing with others
        • Ex: Really nice images for internal uses, decent images for brochures
      • Issues
        • Bulk uploader only works on PC
  • Rachell Underhill – Web & Information Systems Manager at The Graduate School
    • Overview
      • Have 29K+ photos in their system
    • Resource Space
      • Open Source
        • Will likely need a developer to help you
        • API functionality
        • Plugin library and user base
      • Customizable
        • Can manipulate it to meet your needs if you are PHP savvy
      • They have paid plans for helping with customization
      • Designed for OXFAM originally
        • Functionality for photo requests
        • Library feel to it
      • Works well with massive number of photos
      • Have on separate server due to size
        • Want to be sure it has enough resources
      • Not folder based – Keyword based
        • Must train users to think of things this way
        • Can make collections and groupings
          • Can be user specific
        • Need to think differently about organization when uploading
      • Can display external galleries
      • Can store videos

Questions

  • How to allow public to submit videos, images, documents?
    • How to acquire media?
    • Answers
      • Submittable
        • Expensive, prices constantly going up
        • Does not talk well with other programs
        • Works, but not the best program
      • Is anyone using large storage solutions?
        • How to handle massively expanding storage (5,10,20TB sizes)
      • Do we know if the UNC libraries have a plan or system to aggregate UNC media?
        • Do we have any expertise we could leverage from somewhere on campus?
        • Answers
          • SILS projects
          • ibiblio
      • How To Move Large Media Files Without FTP?This is not for storage, but a resource for sending huge media files, if this is a need for anyone. Pricey also.If you download the white paper, you will likely start getting lots of emails with that for a while. If you prefer to avoid that onslaught, here are two links to the product information.