practical examples of a dam implementation: daniel burt

Digital Asset Management for Museums

Pitt Rivers Museum Case Study

27 November 2013The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London

http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/events/dam2013

Daniel BurtUniversity of Oxford / Sunnymedia Ltd

My background

• Apple Engineer

• Filemaker Developer

• Medical Sciences work

• Publishing work

• Collections work

What is Digital Asset Management?

• Method for storing and retrieving digital assets

• At a basic level this can simply be an organised folder structure

• Often need to link supporting metadata to these assets

• In the context of the PRM assets include…

Digital Images

Pictures of Objects and scans of the Photograph Collections, as well as pictures of events held at the museum

Larger TIFF or RAW files for archival storage and compressed JPEG or PNG versions as working copies.

Video Files

Videos of events at the museum, film archive collections, education videos, and videos for research projects

Original camera recordings, files from Final Cut Pro, and final output files (mp4s) for delivery

Audio Files

Recordings of events at the museum, ethnographic sound archive, and education recordings

Original media, master WAV files from digitisation, and mp3 working copies

Numbers

• Objects database – 235,000 records• Photographs database – 175,000 records

• The DIA currently contains over 120,000 images, accounting for about 30% of Objects

• The Photographs database contains about 85,000 images, with up to 3 versions of each photo, giving a current total of about 250,000 images

DAM @ PRM - Overview• Link to and enhance existing collections

management databases

• One-to-many relationship between records and digital assets

• Centralized archival storage

• Delivery to internal and external users

DAM @ PRM - Main Steps

• STEP ONE - Capture

• STEP TWO - Cataloguing

• STEP THREE - Storage

• STEP FOUR - Delivery

DAM @ PRM - Capture

• Future-proofing assets– Standard non-proprietary file types

• Ensuring high quality assets– Uncompressed archival versions of assets (WAV files,

TIFFs, AV files etc.)

• Working versions– Versions for online delivery adhering to HTML5

standards

DAM @ PRM – Image Capture

Scans of films and transparencies use Hasselblad scanners

Scans of prints done using Epson flatbed scanners

Digital images are taken by the museum’s photographer, or by collections management team using DSLR cameras

DAM @ PRM – Image Capture

Many images are scanned from existing slides (lantern slides, 35mm etc.), and new digital images are also being taken of objects. Slides, negatives and prints are scanned and saved as TIFF files.

The DAM system assigns filenames for these images in order to link them to the database records.

DAM @ PRM – Image Capture

DAM @ PRM – Audio Capture

• Physical media capture outsourced (wax cylinders BL, other media to a local specialist)

• Field recordings and local events via digital recorders or direct to computer

DAM @ PRM – Video Capture

• Physical media capture outsourced

• Events generally filmed by professional companies

• Education team uses Sony ‘prosumer’ DV cameras

DAM @ PRM - Cataloguing

Photograph Collections are catalogued in the main Photographs database

Images of Objects are catalogued in the DIA and linked to the main Objects database

Audio files are catalogued in the main Sound database

DAM @ PRM – Cataloguing Photos

DAM @ PRM – Cataloguing Objects

DAM @ PRM – Cataloguing Audio

DAM @ PRM – Storage

DAM script assigns the asset’s filename, and transfers the archival copy to the museum’s RAID storage.

A second step creates JPEG versions of the image and transfers these to the web server that feeds these assets into the internal and online databases

DAM @ PRM - Storage

• RAID (internal access only) – backup to HFS

• ‘Live’ assets stored on web server – backed up to HFS

• Cloud storage?

DAM @ PRM – Delivery

Assets are delivered via standard web technology to the internal databases and their online equivalents.

All images are visible internally, whereas only those marked as ‘for web’ are shown online.

DAM @ PRM – Delivery

DAM @ PRM – Delivery

DAM @ PRM – Delivery

DAM @ PRM - Delivery

Delivery via project-specific websites

Incorporation of assets into researchers’ blogs etc.

Possible due to standardization of asset storage (URLs), allowing for easy re-use of assets.

DAM @ PRM - Delivery

DAM @ PRM - Delivery

DAM @ PRM – The Future?

Storage of files in the cloud would take away the need for internal security and backups

Amazon Cloud, dropbox, box, or other commercial providers?

An affordable and easily manageable solution for smaller institutions

My other current projects

Leverhulme funded BACH project and mapping

Wellcome Trust funded ALHOM and collaborative online asset creation

Two AHRC projects:

• Dirhams for Slaves

• OCIANA

Thank You

daniel.burt@orinst.ox.ac.uk

or

danburt@mac.com

sunnymedia.co.uk