Digital Asset Management at the University of Washington Libraries:

Teamwork and Technology

Greg Zick, Professor, Electrical EngineeringDirector of Center for Information Systems Optimization,University of Washington

Betsy Wilson, Director University of Washington Libraries

Geri Bunker Ingram, Head, Library Systems DepartmentUniversity of California, San Diego

Jill Fluvog, Project Manager, CISOUniversity of Washington

Digital Library Issues

• Massive quantities of media items

• Rapidly evolving technologies

• Structured, semi-structured, unstructured and multimedia data

• Frequent modification of collections to support expanding and additional projects

• Diverse user community with different characteristics, preferences, and capabilities

Goals of UW Libraries/CISO Collaboration

• Make media resources available electronically to an audience of:

– Faculty

– Researchers

– Schools

– Community groups

• Build online media databases to provide access to Special Collections and manage scholarly information

45 collections with 40,000 items currently online or in development

Background of Collaboration

• Began in 1996 between Libraries, Electrical Engineering’s Center for Information Systems Optimization and campus faculty

• Collections stored in multitude of forms and locations• Demand building on and off campus for better access to media

items• Balance necessary between demand for open access,

protection of rare archived materials, and technology options• Commercial tool not identified and CISO was conducting

research into optimal digital database technologies• Partnership formed with Libraries identifying archival and

access requirements and CISO responding with technology

Collaboration Outcomes

• Successful online collection development

• Development of the CONTENT Software Suite for digital asset management

• Ongoing transformation of Libraries’ focus to embrace dramatic changes in information archiving and access

CONTENT Software Suite for digital asset management

• Builds and manages multimedia collections on the Web and links media files with finding aids

• Scalable for small collections

• Optimized for speed in large dataset delivery

• Supports incremental collection building process

• Administrative interface offers terms and tools familiar to librarians and collection owners

• Search interface provides “friendly” Web-based access for broad user community

Collaboration Outcomes: New CONTENT Features

• Enhanced full resolution indexing for archival purposes

• Support for multi-page documents and 3-D media items

• Authenticated Vocabulary for consistency and quality in metadata entry

• Support for Dublin Core qualifiers

• Side-by-side text for multi-page documents with search capability within document

Full Resolution management

Picture Cube

Multi-page document with search capability

Video

Collaboration Outcomes: Evolution

• UW Libraries Digital Collections are “work in progress” with new collections being added continuously

• Outreach activities extending lessons learned to other organizations

• Libraries offering leadership to partners in state and local community

• Faculty and teaching now supported in new way

Building online digital collections: Capturing Media

• CONTENT supports numerous media types - images, documents, audio clips, video segments

• Acquisition Station facilitates capture in multiple modes

– Single images imported from any directory

– Sets of images added in batch input mode

– Template defined for repeating fields

– Import of existing metadata from other programs via export/import of delimited ASCII files

Acquire images from scanners and other TWAIN devices

Import single items or batches of items

Use Template Creator for repetitive field data

Building online digital collections: Organizing Collections

• Spreadsheet View provides “fill” capability to repeat field descriptions

• Media Editor allows single item metadata entry with Authenticated Vocabulary – Ships with LOC Thesaurus for Graphical Materials

– May customize or use existing vocabulary file

• Items may be combined and defined as “postcards” (front and back), “picture cubes” (six sides) or multi-page documents

Spreadsheet View

Media Editor Form with Authenticated Vocabulary

Building online digital collections: Managing and Administering Collections

• Server Administrator and Collection Administrators are identified for each server/collection

• All administration may be done from a browser - anywhere

• Server Administrator sets up new collections and authorizes Collection Administrators

• Collection Administrators add new items, edit collections, set up full resolution scan support and customize description fields (hidden, searchable…)

Administrative Screen

Administrative Global Search and Replace

Building online digital collections: Defining Descriptive Fields

• Critical step when indexing collection materials• CONTENT supports unlimited number of fields• Allows collection expert(s) to define names as

relevant to discipline and audience• Results in more effective searching, particularly in

large archives

Administrative screen – Managing Metadata Fields

Building online digital collections: Searching Across Multiple Collections

Challenge arises in searching multiple collections with different metadata

• CONTENT provides mapping function and collection owner defines how unique fields will be related to other collections

• Example: Two collections searched for city “Olympia”– Results retrieved from both collections

– Original descriptions maintained

– Owners have mapped specific fields to Dublin Core (“city” in one and “location depicted” in another are mapped to “coverage”)

• Default mapping is qualified Dublin Core - other standards (e.g. VRA) can be used

• Description fields defined independently as searchable, hidden, and/or with an Authenticated Vocabulary

HTML Search Client:

Search across multiple collections for “Olympia”

Building online digital collections: Collection Expansion

Lesson learned: digital collections spawn more collections• Distributed Acquisition Stations support geographically

remote partnerships• Administrator maintains integrity through “gatekeeper”

functions• Washington example:

– State Library funding collaborative collection development featuring local digitization, indexing, then online availability via the University of Washington Libraries server

• Supports collection owners with limited IT (or non-existent) resources

Building online digital collections: Setting Up Collections for Searching

• HTML client accessible by anyone with a browser

• Campus and community users have access regardless of size/cost of their system (network speed a consideration…)

• Access is extremely fast: Design goal to retrieve results from million item collection in < 1 second

• JAVA client serves users with powerful machines and specific requirements– Workbox allows user to organize sets of images

– Workbox contents may be sent as HTML file to web page for course development or colleague for review

JAVA Search Client

JAVA Client Workbox

Building online digital collections: Setting Up Collections for Searching

Lesson learned: End users have varied interests, backgrounds and searching experience

• CONTENT’s HTML Query Building Tool allows collection owners to “pre-define” likely queries, tailored for intended audience

• Queries then built into Web pages to provide customized interface

• Example: UW Digital Collections Klondike goldrush photographs by Eric Hegg – Set up for use by broad audience (including classrooms)– Descriptive icons and mouse “rollovers” integrate queries into

Web page• Queries may search across multiple collections

Conclusions and future:UW Libraries Impact and Direction

• Digital Collections group extending impact of collaboration– On campus: partnership with Center for Teaching and Learning

Technology offering digital tools to more faculty– Off campus: partnerships with local museums, public libraries and

historical societies

• Vision: Development of rich regional multimedia archives integrating digital media resources and accessible by broad range of users.

• Libraries’ role: Serve as catalyst by sharing cataloging and collection expertise and leading “best practices” exchange

Conclusions and future:Evolving Technology

• CONTENT’s goals: – Be responsive to real problems of professional

archivists and respond with features and functions for state-of-the-art archival support

– Provide scalable offering allowing groups to start on small scale with prototype projects and expand collections after thoughtful review

– Listen to users (now installed in diverse organizations internationally) and never stop collaborating

For more information

• To learn more about CONTENT Software for digital asset management:– http://content.engr.washington.edu

• To browse the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections:– http://content.lib.washington.edu/