I've been thinking all along that digital assets should be treated similarly to
analog records when it comes to permanent retention. Let them be active for a
given period of time and then transfer responsibility for them to the museum's
archivist, who will appraise them and develop retention policies.
Just as we don't necessarily keep all 250 slides of the Museum Ball forever,
the archivist may decide to select the most representative digital images ...
or keep them all. The key is going to be getting people to provide decent
descriptive metadata on the inbound side of the DAMS, so that the archivist has
something to work with a year or two down the road.
It's a case where the DAMS managers, IT, and archives need to work hand in hand
to hammer out the workflow. But archivists know how to do this, so let them
lead (can you tell I used to be the Museum archivist?).
Deb Wythe
Deborah WytheHead, Digital Collections and ServicesBrooklyn Museum200 Eastern
ParkwayBrooklyn, NY 11238tel: 718 501 6311fax: 718 501 6145deborahwythe at
hotmail.com> Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 17:58:01 -0500> From: RealW at
CarnegieMuseums.Org> To: mcn-l at mcn.edu> Subject: [MCN-L] What to save:
Policies for selecting/archiving digital assets> > 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> _______________________________________________> You are
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