CONTENTdm Features
CONTENTdm includes powerful features and tools to assist with
every phase of digital collection implementation. These phases
include the creation and organization of media collections,
searching, accessing and presenting media items, and the ongoing
management of your CONTENTdm collection environment.
Creating and Organizing Collections
CONTENTdm simplifies the process of creating and organizing
collections. Each user has personal project space within the
CONTENTdm Acquisition Station on their desktop. When image
acquisition and metadata entry are complete within a user's project,
the items are uploaded to a centralized pending queue for final
review or editing by a collection administrator before being added
to the collection.
Inputting Data and Media
Items can be added to CONTENTdm singly or in batches. CONTENTdm's
batch processes and tools streamline your work, making it easy to
add and manage thousands of digital items at once. Create metadata
templates to speed and standardize the entry of descriptive and
administrative metadata. Apply image settings instantly to items as
they are imported into your projects or make global changes to
metadata within live collections.
CONTENTdm also provides a range of options for working with high
resolution JPEG or TIFF files, from automatically creating lower
resolution display copies that enable modifications to image quality
and legibility, to using custom display copies you create.
Optimizing pages of a document
Tab-delimited text import enables easy import of metadata into
CONTENTdm from existing tools such as Access, Excel, and FileMaker
Pro. Users can also batch import lengthy text files from OCR or
transcripts into metadata fields to enable full-text searching of
documents. Or, use the OCR Extension to generate OCR during the
import process. Other batch processes allow users to make global
changes to collections or the database.
Project Template Transfer
When projects require similar
settings, such as image rights or administrative metadata, the
project settings can be transferred easily between workstations or
copied within the same workstation. This saves setup time for users
and eases collaboration between organizations sharing the same
CONTENTdm server since project settings can be shared with
colleagues.
Controlled Vocabulary
CONTENTdm offers controlled
vocabulary for consistent, uniform metadata entry. Our software is
shipped with the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphical
Materials I, or users can import or develop their own
controlled vocabulary. The CONTENTdm controlled vocabulary feature
permits review of vocabulary additions before they are accepted and
provides support for Dublin Core Qualifiers.
Complex Media Types
CONTENTdm handles audio, video,
PDF, image files and more. Streaming media server support provides
efficient delivery of streamed items.
CONTENTdm also enables users to define items that consist of
multiple views so search results will retrieve entire entities, or,
Compound Objects, rather than individual elements. Add documents and
monographs, or multi-sided objects such as post cards or sculptures.
The process for creating and adding Compound Objects to collections
is now streamlined and easier to use than ever before. CONTENTdm
also provides comprehensive editing options for making changes to
Compound Objects even after they have been added to collections. To
see how CONTENTdm handles specific media types, check out our media
samples.
Image Rights
CONTENTdm's Image Rights tools provide
flexible options for identifying ownership of items in your
collections. Options include an easily configured band of color and
text, a color brand, or a grayscale watermark. Each can be
customized to meet your needs. When items in collections are viewed
by end-users, the band, brand, or watermark with ownership or
copyright information will be clearly displayed.
Establishing image rights settings
Searching and Accessing Collections
To be highly useful, collections need to be accessible to
researchers—whether those researchers are grade school students
searching the Web, or sophisticated users of your password protected
intranet. Search features must be easy to use and return results
rapidly. CONTENTdm enables users to create predefined queries and
customized interfaces to collections, and returns search results in
less than one second from collections containing more than a million
items. Search results provide one-click access to images, documents,
audio, or video files, and their associated metadata. End-users who
are unfamiliar with a collection can simply browse, rather than
formulate specific searches. Zoom and pan features enable end-users
to see any image in more detail.
High-powered Search Features
Flexible search features
include Dublin Core and Latin-1 character set support; Boolean
operators; and a powerful advanced search option for users to search
by defined fields, across all fields, by proximity, and across one
or many collections. CONTENTdm also auto-generates search terms
based on existing metadata.
Advanced search page
CONTENTdm Web Templates provide flexibility for customization of
collection Web sites and search results pages so data can be viewed
in ways that best suit your collection. CONTENTdm Web Templates are
easily localized to support languages other than English.
Create predefined searches and custom search pages with
CONTENTdm's Custom Query and Results. Collection owners with
archival images can provide one-click access to high-resolution
JPEG, TIFF, or MrSID images.
Save Items for Reference and Presentations
End-users
can save any media type and its metadata as a link in their
CONTENTdm Favorites for presentations or reference. Items added to
My Favorites are links to items within collections rather than the
actual images. Items may be added to My Favorites whenever you
search or browse a CONTENTdm collection. CONTENTdm Favorites may
also be saved as HTML pages and sent to other CONTENTdm users who
can view the items as long as they have Web access to the CONTENTdm
server. Create custom slide shows of Favorites, view and rearrange
images or compare two images.
Items saved as Favorites
CONTENTdm also provides an easy to use "reference URL" for all
items. This unique URL can be generated for any item when browsing
or searching a collection. Users can record this persistent, short
URL for future use, ensuring accurate and consistent citation. This
link always returns to the original digital file and metadata within
the collection so context is maintained.
Managing Collections
Collection and system administrators can perform needed tasks
easily. CONTENTdm enables complete database administration through a
simple Web interface, allowing designated users to edit live
collections, perform global search and replace operations, create
new collections, and customize collection queries.
Common Data Standards
CONTENTdm is fully compliant with
OAI-PMH v2. OAI, or Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata
Harvesting, is an emerging standard for metadata harvesting. For
collection owners seeking to make their metadata available for
harvesting, CONTENTdm supports collection-level OAI harvesting.
Support for OAI flow control provides more reliable network
transmission for harvesting especially large collections.
Metadata fields within CONTENTdm are fully configurable to
provide maximum flexibility. CONTENTdm also provides default
metadata templates specified by the Dublin and VRA Cores.
To enable users to work with metadata in other programs,
CONTENTdm supports export of metadata descriptions using XML. Users
can define specific fields to be exported and designate the format
for each exported field, including repeating fields and
customization of XML tag names. This enables the selection of
specific formats for more compatibility with local catalog
systems.
Null data type support allows users to add metadata singly or in
batches for items that are not yet in place and URL data type
support allows lengthy audio and video sequences stored on your
streaming media server to be accessed through CONTENTdm, providing
efficient and reliable delivery over the Internet. Additionally
CONTENTdm supports the mapping of streamed files to streaming media
servers, providing efficient delivery of streamed files while
maintaining database management within CONTENTdm.
If you're ready to explore CONTENTdm for yourself, simply
complete our evaluation
request form to begin your free 60-day trial. | 
