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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