Digital Asset Management Task Force formed

The LITRE Advisory Board, at its November 9 meeting, unanimously approved a proposal to move forward with the recommendation to establish a campus-wide task force to investigate Digital Asset Management (DAM) needs and begin a planning process leading toward more effective solutions. Subsequently, a small working group discussed potential elements of the task force’s scope of work, including short- and long-term visions for DAM, criteria for a successful system, metadata standards, and open architecture standards.

Charge to the Task Force

The LITRE Advisory Board recognizes that NC State currently has no overarching scheme for ensuring that images and other digital materials created by faculty, students, and staff are preserved and managed for availability and use, now and in the future. The university community would benefit from a scaleable, university-wide system for digital asset management, or, at a minimum, a common architecture with articulated standards and guidelines. Ready access to an indexed collection of digital materials is of obvious value for research and instruction, as is preservation of the digital objects that play an increasingly important role in scholarly activities.

Based on a recommendation in the LITRE Quality Enhancement Plan, the Digital Asset Management Task Force is established and charged to investigate the range of issues related to digital asset management, including existing collections, systems, and needs; architecture and standards; metadata/indexing processes; content ownership and other policies; available products/solutions; technical support; and costs (including the cost of inaction). Members have been selected to represent the breadth of campus disciplinary, pedagogical, and technical expertise. The task force will prepare a report with recommendations to the LITRE Advisory Board and the Provost during 2005, and is requested to apprise the Board periodically of its progress.

Recommendations from the working group (pdf