Hi Perris and all, We have almost 2TB stored in our DAMs (Extensis Portfolio) and we identify folders on our servers whose contents are appropriate for Portfolio and they sync with the system - they are almost all images. When items are added or deleted or changed in these folders, all of that is reflected in the DAMs. As the person managing our digital assets, I use Portfolio to batch process and embed files (using custom mapping for our metadata, which includes core work information imported from our CMS).
Our digital assets do not, unfortunately, reside on just one server, but live on many and this has been an issue for us. From the beginning the DAMs had had speed issues and it's likely partly due it looking across several servers for data, not just one. Our collections images - which account for most of the files users look for and download are in the same place, but the intent with this software was to make digital assets across departments more easily accessible and our education files, for instance, sit on a server distinct from the DAMs. Are others of you consolidating your assets from more than one location in your DAMs? I'm wondering if others have had similar issues with capacity and if you have had to take a second look at your expectations for your DAMs. As I noted, our intention from the beginning (our beginning was 2011) was to make it easier to find and share digital assets across the museum, but as we continue to struggle with the number of records in our DAMs (we have a little in-house photography studio now and a grant supporting digitization, so we're adding new images constantly) and the number of servers we're asking it to 'watch,' I'm wondering if I need to reconsider the scope and maybe our DAMs should just look at collections photography for now. If others have needed to recalibrate, I'd be interested in hearing what necessitated that and how you're doing now. I'm curious about how others are doing and would really like to hear what's working and what's giving you frown lines, so please get in touch! Thanks, Emma Emma Wolman Digital Assets Manager Portland Art Museum 503-276-4212 | direct portlandartmuseum.org -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of King, Perris Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 10:59 AM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] Experiences with DAM systems? I'm currently researching different digital asset management systems to work with a large (over 1TB) image collection. Currently I'm trying to reach out to museums that manage similarly large image collections to hear their experiences with implementing and using digital asset management systems, particularly from the viewpoint of photography/publications/design departments. I'd particularly like to know how the searching capabilities and uploading/downloading managers of various DAMs have worked for the users, as well as what your workflow is for metadata tagging. Thus far I have looked at Piction, Netxposure, and OpenText, but I'm open to hearing from other users working with large image collections. Please contact me if you're willing to share some of your experiences, and I can clarify my questions a bit. Thanks!
