Creating and organizing collections

CONTENTdm simplifies the process of creating and organizing collections. Each CONTENTdm user has personal project space within the Acquisition Station on their desktop. When image acquisition and metadata entry are complete within a user’s project, they upload the items to a centralized pending queue for final review or editing by a collection administrator before the items are added to the collection.

Inputting data and media

You can add items 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 Microsoft Access, Excel and FileMaker Pro. You also can 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 you 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 you 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 you can import or develop your 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 you 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 postcards 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