Thank you to all those who responded to my plea for information on CONTENTdm.  I think I obscured the issue by using the company name PTSF instead of the product name of ArchiveWare when I listed the other system we are seriously considering.

 

I’ve delayed reporting to the list because we are still evaluating.  I haven’t heard from any ArchiveWare users.  Are you out there? 

 

Here are a few things we’ve learned from feedback, research, demonstrations, etc.  If anyone thinks I’ve misrepresented the products, please let me know.  And if you have information you feel is relevant, please discuss it on list if of general interest, or contact me off list if appropriate.

 

CONTENTdm is better known and has been adopted as a “memory project” platform by several state libraries, including the one in Arizona.  Because it is partnered with OCLC, one export can be to WorldCat (or soon to be WorldCat and RLIN, apparently).

 

ArchiveWare appears to be more adapted to documents than CONTENTdm, for which demonstrations are heavily slanted to scanned or born-digital photographs, realia or other images, including moving images.  (CONTENTdm does support sound files as well.)

 

CONTENTdm stores “transcripts” of documents as a single field in the metadata, limited by the field limit of 128,000 characters (per page), whereas ArchiveWare uses a different method.  This affects indexing of full text.  An OCR’d document has a “transcript,” but as far as born-digital documents are concerned, CONTENTdm extracts text from PDF files only.  If “Word” documents or other types of textual documents are imaged (HTML, etc.), the text must be cut and pasted into a “transcript” that can then be uploaded with the document.  ArchiveWare allows indexing of non-PDF, non-OCR’d documents without cutting and pasting.

 

Both systems include options for applying watermarks or (in the case of CONTENTdm) “bands” (at the bottom) to an image.  ArchiveWare’s options appear to be more flexible than CONTENTdm, which appears to apply a watermark across the board.  ArchiveWare allows for watermark/nonwatermark options to differ according to who is using the document, just as CONTENTdm allows for the specification of different permissions for use to apply to different patrons.  ArchiveWare’s options include storing two copies of images, one watermarked, and one not watermarked.  One demonstrator pointed out to us that images stored on CONTENTdm cannot be watermarked retrospectively—that is, once uploaded without a watermark, a watermark cannot be later applied. 

 

CONTENTdm allows for the uploading of images into an approval queue without an acquisition station, and for the storage of images in a “favorites” user area for lectures, presentations, etc.

 

In many cases I don’t know whether the systems match in areas I’ve discussed here, since several of us are doing the evaluation, and not all of us have had the same demonstration experiences.

 

Arel Lucas

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott Campus

(928) 777-3907