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 (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting is an emerging standard for metadata harvesting.) If you’re seeking to make your 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 you to work with metadata in other programs, CONTENTdm supports export of metadata descriptions using XML. You 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 you to add metadata singly or in batches for items that aren’t 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.