Have any of the institutions who have gone down the DAMS road also succeeded in developing policies for deciding which assets to retain? The discussions we have had here leave our heads spinning wondering who would make these decisions and with what criteria. Like everyone else, we have thousands of images depicting multiple views of an event or gallery, multiple bracketed exposures of conservation treatment or collections documentation, multiple images specific to a particular initiative or campaign long past, alternate crops or edits, and so on. We realized quickly that these decisions would have to be made in many cases by a knowledgeable and broad-minded staff person rather than a student intern or volunteer. But who has the time?
And then there is the perhaps even more complex world of audio and video. Archive the raw footage, the outtakes, the clips, the final edits, etc.? We have a task force that is developing a proposal for an enterprise-wide DAMS and the task force wants to include information about the impact a DAMS would have on process and staffing. If anyone has been through this and come up with solutions for their institutions, we would very much appreciate it if you could share them with us. It would also be interesting to know whether the permissions and policies that can be set by a DAMS administrator might also enforce conformity to established standards for content selection. Will Real Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
