AIATSIS

Digital Asset Management Solution

Doug Moncur <doug.moncur@aiatsis.gov.au>

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

What’s digital asset management?• Basically it’s a database

– Database holds information about the assets – metadata

– Metadata describes object – can include provenance, ownership, description as well as technical information

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

What’s a digital asset management solution?• A database to tell you

where everything is and what it is

• A storage system to hold and preserve the objects

• A searchable front end to allow you to search and view the holdings.

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

What’s a digital asset?

• A digital asset is either– A digital copy of an existing

object, eg scanned photograph

– A born digital recording, eg a digital photograph

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

What’s AIATSIS doing?

• Already holds huge collection

• Busy digitising the existing sound recordings to preserve them

• Needs an asset management system to track and manage these assets– Something equivalent to a library

catalogue

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

State of play

• Currently in the middle of procurement– 2 candidate software

products selected and undergoing extensive trial

– Designing storage and backup solution to maintain integrity of digital collection

– System planned to be online Q3 2005

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

It’s digital, it’s a database…• Collection will also be

online and accessible over the web

• Not everything can be freely available– Some culturally sensitive– Some ownership unclear– Need access control to

objects

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

Access control

• It’s difficult– Need to be able to say who

people are and can access (Assertion)

– Need to be able to say what the access rights are on the object (Authorization)

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

Access Control …

• Got to be pragmatic– Can only automate simple

queries• 60% would be good enough

– Need to involve communities in process of saying who can get access

– Need to record access restrictions in metadata

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

Experience elsewhere

• ALLIA Central American database– Database of Mayan

language resources– Some sensitive material– As communities became

more used to idea of using the internet became more open to putting material online

NRPIPA Meeting, Darwin :: 30 & 31 March 2005

And?

• DAMS should help preserve material

• Online access should help communities regain access to the material

• Some material will always be restricted

• Access too complicated to ever completely automate