Development & Implementation Plan
OAIS
Current System
Metadata
Interaction with System
The development and implementation of DAMS requires determining digital content producers needs and evaluating current information technology systems. As a clear understanding of user needs evolves, steps necessary to meet those requirements will be taken. These steps will be designed to incrementally adjust the current DLSD information architecture to accommodate several facets of service to the digital community.
Issues surrounding metadata and preservation are instrumental to the development of an effective and comprehensive management system. Maintenance of a functional system will require vigilant research of these issues. DLSD's mission to provide up to date technological information services positions it to best monitor these concerns in context of the overall University digital content producers and users. At first it is through pilot projects with individual campus entities that DLSD will begin to investigate the needs of digital content producers and users. Eventually, it will become a procedural process of constant re-evaluation of relationships between digital content producers, the digital collection's users, and the Digital Assets Management System.
DAMS functionality is also greatly defined by its usability. The development of custom interfaces to the Metadata Registry and the digital archive will allow digital collection managers and administrators the ability to control their own metadata and digital objects. Additionally, custom interfaces can provide user-audience specific interfaces to work with collections.
The primary components of DAMS are a Metadata Registry and a Digital Archive for the storage of digital objects. The repository is comprised of two sections that accommodate storage: shot-term storage for web services or temporary storage; and an archive for long-term retention and preservation of digital objects. The repository and archives are heavily influenced by the Open Archival Information System model (OAIS). The Metadata Registry is influenced by metadata research from Dublin Core, the Open Archival Initiative, the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records data model, and Harmony Project's entity relationship models. These and other issues are explored in greater detail through the links below. Research on these issues continues in the information science fields and DLSD as a part of an RLG-member library, is committed not only following that research, but also contributing to it by analyzing the development of DAMS at UT and reporting on it to other institutions.