I'm responding to this thread because I had asked about two other systems to
which our archives had narrowed its decision-making, PTFS's ArchivalWare and
Dimema's CONTENTdm, and I haven't yet summarized our findings for the list.
For those interested in digging further into Digitool, here's their URL:
http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/digitool.htm
First, thanks very much to all those who responded to my pleas for
information about ArchivalWare and CONTENTdm and information about other DAM
systems. Some phone calls and an invitation to see one of them in use were
particularly useful.
I don't know the reasons why the search had been narrowed to ArchivalWare
and CONTENTdm before I entered the decision-making process, but Digitool
wasn't in the running by the time I came onboard. We've made a decision to
go with ArchivalWare, and here are some reasons:
(1) Our main concern is accessibility to documents, although we have
many photographs as well. CONTENTdm's orientation appears to be more toward
images than toward documents, and this is reflected in the fact that the
"transcript" or searchable text for documents is held in a metadata field.
All searching is done in metadata fields, and these fields are all limited
to 128,000 characters each. This gives a wide scope for description of a
digital asset, but will not hold the "transcript" of a large document
without separating out smaller portions. Where all "transcripts" come from
OCR texts, documents in PDF shorter than or equal to 128,000 characters, or
transcripts created by other means such as transcribing handwritten
documents, this is not a problem. It's also not a problem if keywords or
other descriptions of a document are sufficient for searching. Since we
anticipate that our researchers will need an index to the very end of
documents up to around 400 pages, this is a problem for us.
ArchivalWare stores the "transcript" or text of a document in a separate
area, not as part of metadata fields, with no limitations not due to the
server. Thus all text of every document is searchable. This is probably a
better solution for us.
(2) We are running Dynix for library automation. ArchivalWare is
partnered with Dynix such that our archives will be accessible through our
OPAC. This could be a significant advantage for our graduate students and
other researchers. Alternatively, CONTENTdm allows out-of-the-box export to
OCLC's WorldCat, and this has been a significant plus on the side of that
DAM. However, there are other means of export in current use, and if
ArchivalWare does not support such an export (they're getting back to us on
that) now or in soon-to-be-implemented versions, we could use a workaround.
(3) ArchivalWare supports "content bundles" that look much like Yahoo!'s
directory functions, where you can choose a topic and narrow it for browsing
("Arizona" narrows to "Yavapai County" narrows to "Prescott," and in that
city you can browse businesses, schools, entertainment, etc.). This offers
a browse function that could be significantly useful to our researchers. On
the other hand, CONTENTdm offers a "favorites" function to researchers that
allows them to relate the pointers to particular documents to their
profiles.
(4) ArchivalWare's "acquisition station" is a Web function, which has
both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that entry of data is
not dependent on the downloading of software to particular computers and the
use of those computers. That is helpful to us, since we share out a limited
number of computers for different uses at different times. On the other
hand, of course, if the Web function of the ArchivalWare server or the Web
at our site goes down, we've lost the ability to work. CONTENTdm includes a
number of acquisition station downloads in its base price.
(5) ArchivalWare is slightly less expensive than CONTENTdm, including
maintenance fees.
(6) Although CONTENTdm supports different thesauri (controlled
vocabularies) for each metadata field if desired-which I consider to be a
significant advantage, allowing the use of, say, the Getty thesaurus for the
description and a local thesaurus for title, etc.-ArchivalWare has a very
thorough and customizable set of search functions that we thought offered
significant advantages for our researchers. All metadata and text can be
searched through a single search function, or each metadata field can be
searched separately. The search results are customizable by both the user
and (more broadly) by the administrator of the system.
(7) Although both systems are hierarchical, with CONTENTdm supporting a
separate administrative function from entry functions, ArchivalWare supports
a more complex hierarchy of six levels of permission in the system, each
with more privileges than the last: a public or searching interface,
without permission to change anything or see anything of the upper levels of
administration; a "read-only" level that shows some of the administrative
features but still can't change anything (essentially demonstration); a
"write" level that allows for editing and creating metadata; a "create"
level in which documents can be added; a "delete" level (interesting that
this is separate and higher than "create"); a final administrative level
that can set up or change anything seen or done by any lower levels,
including customizing the interface seen and used by lower levels, on a
user-by-user basis. I like the idea that "delete" is a higher
administrative level than "write."
(8) ArchivalWare maintains all past versions of a document and metadata
until these are manually deleted or deleted by running a script (such as
"delete all versions of such an age"). These versions, with their creators
or editors and other information, along with dates, can be viewed for each
document. This has advantages and disadvantages-the latter being obviously
that you need to write and run such a script to delete past versions to free
up server space-but it does allow for recovery if mistakes are made.
(9) CONTENTdm has a limited repertoire of reports that can be run on the
system, focused on usage. Although ArchivalWare's out-of-the-box reports
are also mainly on usage, other types of reports include ones potentially
more useful to us.
(10) Although CONTENTdm has an extremely user-friendly out-of-the-box
entry system, ArchivalWare's entry screens can be customized, so we hope
that training will not be more difficult or complicated than it would appear
to be with CONTENTdm. My impression is that more included training is
offered by CONTENTdm, but I'm not sure about this.
Some real advantages of CONTENTdm: They offer several free trial downloads
of acquisition stations with evaluation. ArchivalWare has not so far
offered this to us or others that we know of. This definitely helps in
evaluating the product. CONTENTdm also offers group demos at scheduled
times that are easily set up as part of the evaluation process.
Demonstrations are individually scheduled by ArchivalWare, I think. A major
advantage that CONTENTdm has is its adoption by statewide "memory" projects,
including one in Arizona. CONTENTdm is working with state libraries to
reach out to smaller libraries and museums to allow them to upload their
content without charge (including the download of an acquisition station) to
a server or servers located at the state library. This is a wonderful idea,
and we applaud this use of CONTENTdm. However, we are a private institution
with a special-use archives (available to the public but not the same as a
historical society or focusing on local history or even aviation history in
general), so this function is not useful to us.
My advice to anyone considering a digital-asset-management system is to try
to get a trial download to test-drive it, get a demonstration for all
decision-making staff, gather all your questions about the system and make
sure they are answered by a qualified rep, consult other professionals here
or on other relevant listservs or gatherings to find questions or flaws, and
visit a site where the systems you are considering are used, if at all
possible. Although there are no ArchivalWare sites in Arizona currently, we
accepted the generous offer of Sharlot Hall here in Prescott to see
CONTENTdm in use and talk with the archivist using it, and that helped our
decision considerably, even though the archivist praised that system in
general. (It looks great for museums and archives specializing in
photographs, realia, and short or describable documents, but not for
document-heavy archives that need for very long and digitally acquired
documents to be searchable to the bitter end.)
Thanks again to all who replied and especially to those who contributed time
to answer questions and offer demonstration and/or comment.
Arel
Arel Lucas
Archives/Special Collections Librarian
Aviation Safety & Security Archives
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott Campus
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_____
From: Archives & Archivists [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Rachel Howse Binnington
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 8:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Digitool by Ex Libris
Dear Archival Community,
I am interested to hear from anyone who is using Ex Libris' Digitool for
collection management.
Best,
Rachel Binnington
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