Digital Asset Management at the University of Colorado

A CU system-wide Digital Asset Management Committee was convened in May 2004 to investigate the institutional transition from analog to digital materials in the educational environment. Two task groups were formed to address content and technology issues.

The Task Group on Content, whose charge is image-specific, has determined that digital images are acquired by university collections mainly through a combination of purchases, subscriptions, original on-site photography, scans, digital copy photography, and born-digital objects created on computers. The group has studied and formulated recommendations on these and related topics, such as copyright and fair use in the digital world, and metadata standards for descriptive information about images. Much of its work has revolved around exploring ways to achieve the “critical mass” of digital image content necessary to support faculty in teaching exclusively with digital images. This includes looking into commercial digital images, and an intensive investigation of ARTstor, a subscription-based digital image database. The group coordinates its efforts with those of the Task Group on Infrastructure to determine the best ways to access and retrieve digital images.

The Task Group on Infrastructure investigated software systems capable of serving as a common platform for digital asset management across CU. The group was asked to seek an enterprise solution that provided the best means of cataloging, searching for, retrieving, and presenting a variety of digital content, one which would also interoperate with other software platforms at the university. It established a comprehensive set of evaluative criteria, and investigated a number of software systems, concluding with a recommendation that the CU system select Luna Insight as its common software platform. The group continues to work on related issues, such as digital imaging standards, hardware, authentication and authorization, classroom equipment and support, software training and technical support for collection managers and end-users, and storage and backup of digital objects. (The following documents are in pdf format).

On February 24, 2005, the task groups jointly recommended that the CU system subscribe to ARTstor, and select Luna Insight as the common software platform for digital asset management.

ARTstor

ARTstor (www.artstor.org) is a non-profit subscription service initiated by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to provide curated collections of digital images and associated data for noncommercial and scholarly, non-profit educational use. ARTstor became available in July 2004, and has over 400 U.S. institutions participating. It is currently comprised of approximately 300,000 digital images and associated catalog data, and the tools to make active use of those images. ARTstor expects its digital library to contain approximately half a million images by the summer of 2006.

CU hosted a two-week free trial period of ARTstor from January 18 – February 1, 2005 at all three campuses. A total of 51 questionnaires were received from faculty representing a wide variety of disciplines.

ARTstor Feedback:

University of Colorado, Boulder (pdf)

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (pdf)

University of Colorado, Denver - Auraria Library (pdf)

Luna Insight

Luna Insight (www.lunaimaging.com/insight) is a software system designed to ingest, store, manage, and display centralized collections of digital objects such as images, video, and sound files. Developed in 1993 with support from the J. Paul Getty Trust and Eastman Kodak Company, Luna Insight is cross-platform, packaged with a full suite of presentation tools, able to facilitate personal collections of faculty, supportive of audio and video files, and allows control over access to copyrighted collections. It has an impressive client list of over 90 institutions.

In February 2005, the IT task group selected Luna Insight as its digital library software system because it satisfied the greatest number of our evaluation criteria.

Evaluation Criteria (pdf)

Request for Information (RFI's)

Documents created by the Task Groups:

Joint Task Group Presentation 2.24.05 (PowerPoint)

Digital Asset Management Handout (pdf)

Continuing Work:

• Distribution and posting of copyright documents created under the guidance of University Legal Counsel.

• Implementations of Luna Insight: data models, crosswalks, collection sharing

• Training for collection managers in the use of Luna Insight and ARTstor

• End-user training for Luna Insight and ARTstor

• Metadata: best practices for digital collections

• Digital imaging standards

For questions about this website please contact Jennifer.Parker@Colorado.edu

Last Updated: 08.10.05 JP