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CONTENTdm : Visão geral : Features

Features

CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software is the result of years of development and collaboration with staff from libraries and other cultural heritage organizations. A flexible, multifunction software package that is integrated with powerful OCLC products and services, CONTENTdm provides tools for all aspects of digital collection management.

Why do over 1,000 organizations use CONTENTdm?

A complete solution for digital collections

CONTENTdm meets all your digital collection needs. It is the only solution of its kind to offer all you need to share your collections on the Web. And it’s easy to use too, with just a couple of steps your digital collection is on your Web site and available for searching and browsing. It’s also powerful. CONTENTdm retrieves search results in less than a second from collections of more than a million digital objects.

With a full range of integrated tools—for organizing and managing to publishing and searching collections—CONTENTdm is one of the most flexible digital collection management systems available today.

CONTENTdm also can serve as your institutional repository. PDF documents, theses, dissertations and reports all can be easily stored and managed in CONTENTdm. With its ability to handle any type of file, it can serve as an institutional repository to bring together collections into a cohesive and accessible Web-based environment.

Whether your digital collections consist of photographs, documents, diaries, maps or audio clips, CONTENTdm can help you make everything available to everyone, everywhere through the Web.

With over five million objects on the server we have long-term expansion plans and are confident that CONTENTdm technology will continue to grow to support our efforts.”

—Kenning Arlitsch, Head of Information Technology, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

Easy to use

Would you like to get your digital collections on the Web quickly? CONTENTdm is easy to install and use, and many current users have built or converted collections within a few months. They are assisted by templates, batch processing, customizable out-of-the-box Web interfaces, tutorials, Web training sessions and comprehensive Help files.

Organizations of all types—from small historical societies using volunteers, to research universities with dedicated staff—have found CONTENTdm easy to implement and use.

CONTENTdm is 100% Web-compatible, so servers and collections can be administered from remote desktops. Supplemental training and consulting services also are available.

Flexible and fully customizable

CONTENTdm gives you full control over all digital resources, their descriptions, access and display. You can fully customize metadata fields and create predefined queries. You also can customize all Web interfaces to present your digital collections the way you’d like.

Additionally, you can store any type of file—from multiple-page documents, PDF files and large maps to audio and video files with their transcripts.

CONTENTdm streamlines your workflow. To assist in building collections quickly and accurately, tools such as batch processes, wizards, controlled vocabularies, templates and spreadsheets are provided.

To support multiple workflows and collection building with groups and consortia, CONTENTdm includes tools such as remote Acquisition Stations, Web-based import and digital import through the OCLC Connexion client.

The flexibility of CONTENTdm has fueled creative implementations among users. Many have formed partnerships so that the independent online collections of multiple organizations can be simultaneously searched and viewed through one seamless, CONTENTdm Web interface. And those users with extensive scanning expertise and hardware have partnered with other organizations that lack the resources and experience in order to maximize their investment.

Scalable

CONTENTdm seamlessly grows with your projects. You can upgrade and increase capacity without new software installations. It also eliminates the need to purchase and support multiple software packages for different digital collections. Whether you’re just starting or you’ve outgrown the system you’ve been using, CONTENTdm provides a complete solution that seamlessly grows with projects, eliminating the need to purchase and support multiple software packages for different digital collections.

Organizations with small, unique collections to statewide groups with hundreds of collections have selected CONTENTdm for their projects.

If you’d like to maintain your own collections, but still collaborate with others to provide Web access to a broader range of materials, CONTENTdm offers the Multi-Site Server. End users can search collections located on multiple CONTENTdm Servers in diverse locations from a single search interface. And each collaborating partner with a CONTENTdm Server can maintain their own collections and local identity.

Open, extensible and interoperable

While most users run the CONTENTdm software “out-of-the box,” it also has an API that allows for custom development. The open architecture supports extensions and the Web interface is fully customizable.

Additionally, CONTENTdm works with other software such as federated search applications. Records in existing databases can be easily imported into CONTENTdm, while exporting metadata is simple using the XML export function. Import and export capabilities are compatible with legacy, local, regional and national systems.

CONTENTdm runs on multiple platforms and the Windows desktop client can be installed on standard Windows versions. For more details, see the complete system requirements.

Standards-based

OCLC’s adherence to commonly accepted standards allows CONTENTdm to be open and extensible, as well as provide functionality that meets a wide range of needs. CONTENTdm supports numerous industry standards including Z39.50, Qualified Dublin Core, VRA, XML, JPEG2000 and OAI-PMH.

  • Z39.50—CONTENTdm is Z39.50 compatible through a free open source software application called ZContent developed by the University of Utah Marriott Library. ZContent provides access to digital collections on CONTENTdm servers from library portals and local catalogs and can be downloaded for free from the CONTENTdm User Support Center.
  • Dublin Core and VRA Core—Use of the Dublin Core and VRA (the Visual Resource Association) Core within CONTENTdm allows for a common language when describing media and searching across collections. Collection Administrators also can apply their own field descriptions and map back to the Dublin Core standard to provide flexible searching.
  • OAI-PMH—CONTENTdm Servers support OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) by functioning as OAI repositories for those who wish to make their metadata available for harvesting.
  • XML—XML is used for all internal metadata and structure description. CONTENTdm also offers custom XML export of metadata that supports user-defined fields and formats for greater compatibility with local catalog systems and other applications.

Discovery through WorldCat

By using CONTENTdm, your unique treasures are easily discovered and showcased on the Web for searchers everywhere in the world. Your collections’ metadata can be added to WorldCat to make digital items even more visible to searchers on the Web through WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local.

WorldCat gives digital collections unparalleled visibility on the Internet, allowing you to reach information searchers where many start their search. Those searchers who go to sites such as Google and Yahoo! will discover WorldCat results for library-owned items among their results.

Unequaled range of options

CONTENTdm offers flexible workflow options and a variety of productivity tools. It allows for digital import using the OCLC Connexion client, plus gives you the option to add collection metadata to WorldCat for maximum visibility.

Choose from license levels that match your needs and collection size. Select the cost-effective hosting services or from a variety of server options to suit your environment.

If you need to generate full-text transcripts, an optional OCR (optical character recognition) extension is available. If you’re collaborating with other CONTENTdm users to build collections, consider the Multi-Site Server to provide a single point of access for collection discovery. Also, there are a variety of implementation and supplemental services available.

OCLC also offers a full range of solutions for digital projects. For the long-term preservation of digital masters, you can choose the Digital Archive, which can be easily integrated into CONTENTdm collection building workflows. If you need to harvest born-digital or Web-based content, OCLC’s Web Harvester is the tool for capturing this content, and it’s integrated into both cataloging and digital content management workflows.

Learn more about the options available

World-class support and documentation

OCLC offers world-class support services via phone and e-mail, and your Regional Service Provider offers CONTENTdm Implementation Services to help guide you through key decisions and tasks in order to achieve results quickly.

CONTENTdm provides comprehensive documentation and help is available—anytime, anywhere—through the online User Support Center. The User Support Center includes Help files, tutorials, a knowledgebase and other tools.

What’s more, you can attend Web training sessions, workshops, training sessions and regular user meetings, which are held at ALA conferences and regionally.

Vibrant, global user community

When you choose CONTENTdm, you become part of an active user community of over 1,000 organizations across the world. Users freely share best practices and locally-developed extensions through the CONTENTdm listserv and User Support Center, regional user groups and other collaborations.

Many advanced users often help new users get started by answering questions online, providing examples or offering one-on-one assistance.

Secure

Whatever your security needs, CONTENTdm gives you the options to meet them. CONTENTdm offers item- and collection-level security to ensure resources are available only to specified users or IP addresses. Within a single collection, you can decide to make the metadata accessible to all, while requiring a password to view the actual file, or restrict access to both the items and the data.

CONTENTdm’s Image Rights tools provide flexible options for identifying ownership of items in digital 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.

With CONTENTdm’s security options, there are a variety of choices to protect copyrighted or other restricted materials.

Contact us with your questions, or if you haven’t tried CONTENTdm for yourself, request a free software evaluation or request a Web information session for your organization.