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CONTENTdm : Survol : Questions fréquentes

Common questions

We hope the information below is helpful in answering your questions about CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software.

For an overview of setting up and using CONTENTdm, see the Quick Technical Facts brochure.

If you have additional questions, please contact us.

Questions are organized into: Database organization | Search functions | File formats | Authentication | Platforms | Miscellaneous

Database organization

Is CONTENTdm a relational database? What is the underlying management system?
CONTENTdm uses a text-based search engine built using internet standards and protocols and optimized to handle multimedia for fast text querying capability. This provides great flexibility in metadata support and fast performance for large collections. CONTENTdm supports text searches within or across multiple text-based metadata fields. This allows rich metadata searching of the collection.

Does CONTENTdm allow data to be imported from an existing application?
Data can be imported using delimited ASCII. This facilitates batch import of existing collection items and metadata from Microsoft Excel, Access or other common data programs.

Does CONTENTdm allow data to be exported into a nonproprietary format such as XML?
Yes. CONTENTdm supports the export of data in XML, SGML, or tab-delimited text. CONTENTdm provides custom XML export options so 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. In addition the CONTENTdm collection metadata is accessible through OAI if the user chooses to enable this function. This gives the user a number of flexible and powerful options to link to other software such as online catalog systems.

Can records be integrated into our local Web OPAC?
Absolutely. Here’s how: The Dublin Core item-level records contain URLs to the digital object files. These can be used in the 856 field of the MARC record. Collection level records are often created in the OPAC. They contain URLs to the index pages of the collections themselves. Both types can be uploaded to OCLC’s WorldCat; the records are cross-walked to MARC by OCLC batch processing staff in concert with the library’s collection administrator. From there the records may be downloaded directly to the OPAC.

Does CONTENTdm support OAI?
CONTENTdm is fully compliant with OAI-PMH v2.0. This includes collection-level selection to allow users to choose collections for harvesting on designated servers. Support is also provided for OAI flow control (resumptive token) which permits large harvests of collections to be broken into smaller batches for more reliable network transmission.

How is the metadata (searchable descriptor fields for the databases) stored and indexed? Have you developed your own search software?
The metadata is stored in CONTENTdm in a text-based database developed by OCLC. The database utilizes an optimized search engine (indexing on words and phrases) and has been designed to scale to handle millions of records. The text database can be created through the CONTENTdm Acquisition Station or imported from an existing database using the ASCII-delimited file format. The CONTENTdm search engine is fast, flexible and accurate.

Can databases be distributed?
Multiple collections can reside on a single server and they can be administered remotely. This allows separate outside groups to submit new items and metadata descriptions. You can access the database and add items through as many as 50 remote CONTENTdm Acquisition Stations.

How are items stored?
CONTENTdm stores items in its database. The individual items are accessible on your Web server. Storing item files within the Web server space makes it possible to both encapsulate the items in a database format and make them available with a unique URL.

Are there any limitations on file sizes, number of files, record numbers, number of metadata fields, or field lengths?
CONTENTdm can scale to handle millions of items. The maximum number of items in a single collection is 16 million. The maximum number of metadata fields a user can create is 100. The maximum number of characters supported in a single metadata field is 128,000. Other practical limitations may result from your hardware limitations, such as available disk space.

Search functions

What is CONTENTdm’s searching method?
CONTENTdm provides text search capability across user-defined fields and multiple collections. CONTENTdm also has a browse capability which allows users to view all the items in a collection. Searches can be performed on a single field or multiple fields in a collection and across multiple collections on a CONTENTdm server or multiple servers using the Multi-Site Server. Each collection item is identified by textual metadata. The CONTENTdm search engine optimizes indexing each time items are added to the collection.

Does this software handle books, periodicals, and other documents?
CONTENTdm allows you to create items consisting of multiple elements such as books with multiple pages, postcards, and multiple views of an object so user’s search results will bring up entire entities rather than individual elements.

File formats

What file types does CONTENTdm support?
CONTENTdm can store any file format. It can also display any file format that can be displayed in your browser either natively or via a plug-in. This includes all common formats such as JPEG, GIF, or TIFF images, WAV or MP3 audio, AVI or MPEG video, PDF, and even URLs. Large-format image collections may also benefit from the JPEG2000 Extension to CONTENTdm, an additional option.

Can CONTENTdm be customized to accommodate slides as well as digital images?
CONTENTdm can handle different media types within a single collection (or database), so if you want to combine slides and photos, or other media such as text, video, or audio, you can. You can also create separate databases if necessary. The CONTENTdm Web-based search client can search across databases if they reside on a single server or across collections on multiple servers with the addition of the Multi-Site Server product.

Authentication

Does CONTENTdm have a provision for encrypting or protecting images from being copied without permission?
Images can be protected by restricting access to them using CONTENTdm’s security features. Additionally, CONTENTdm’s Image Rights options allow you to band, brand, or watermark images with copyright information or a logo. There is no facility in CONTENTdm to prevent images from being saved by users viewing them in a Web browser. In general, any image that can be viewed in your browser can be captured and saved.

What kind of security or access controls does CONTENTdm offer?
CONTENTdm supports both collection and item-level security. Access to items and collections can be restricted based on operating system user names or IP addresses. You can also choose to require permissions for items and metadata or set permissions so that metadata is available to all users but permissions are required to view the associated file.

Platforms

Does CONTENTdm run on the Mac?
CONTENTdm runs on a Mac or PC using current Web browsers. The CONTENTdm Server runs on Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Sun Solaris 9 or higher, and Linux systems. The Acquisition Station requires Windows 2000 or XP.

Is the CONTENTdm Server available in Linux or another UNIX version?
The CONTENTdm Server is available for Sun Solaris 9 or higher and Linux. It can also be evaluated on the Solaris and Linux platforms. CONTENTdm has been tested for compatibility on Red Hat Enterprise 4 and 5. CONTENTdm can be expected to run on Linux products with the Linux 2.4+ kernel. CONTENTdm has also been installed and run on: SUSE Linux 10.2 and versions of Debian, Ubuntu Server, Fedora, Aurox, and CentOS. Additionally, CONTENTdm runs on Windows 2000 and Windows 2003.

What Web server do I need to run CONTENTdm?
We recommend Microsoft IIS or Apache Web servers.

What are the recommended Web browsers for viewing collection Web sites?
The recommended browsers for viewing CONTENTdm Web Templates and CONTENTdm Administration are Microsoft IE 6.0+ and Firefox 1.0+ on PCs, and Safari 1.2+ and Firefox 1.0+ on Macintosh. The recommended viewer for PDF files is Adobe Reader version 7.0+.

Miscellaneous

How do you print labels for media such as slides from CONTENTdm?
For printing, CONTENTdm allows you to easily convert your data to tab-delimited format. You may then use Word, FoxPro, or other software to print the labels.

How open is the API? Can we develop custom interfaces to the CONTENTdm server?
CONTENTdm has a well-defined API which allows for custom client development. If your interface is used simply for accessing your media collection through basic queries, customization is very straightforward. Development of your own application with updates or additions would involve disclosing the entire API and would require further licensing discussions.

If our images are already in a database, how difficult will it be to move them to CONTENTdm?
It’s simple to load an existing database into CONTENTdm. If you can export your existing text description information into an tab-delimited file (most databases have this capability) and identify one of the fields as the filename of the corresponding image, you can easily load data and items into CONTENTdm using the data import tools.

Do you support Z39.50?
The University of Utah Marriott Library has developed open source software that adds Z39.50 compatibility to any CONTENTdm digital collections server. The purpose of this software is to provide access to digital collections on CONTENTdm servers from library portals and local catalogs. ZContent is a Perl script and module that provides a Z39.50 target for the CONTENTdm server. ZContent will process incoming Z39.50 requests, convert them to appropriate CONTENTdm requests, and return the results in either USMARC or XML format.

Does CONTENTdm support languages other than English?
CONTENTdm supports entering, storing, displaying, and searching of the following languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Faeroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, and Swedish (collectively known as the Latin 1 character set). Other languages and extended characters can be entered, stored, and displayed in CONTENTdm but search capability is limited. The CONTENTdm Web templates can be fully localized. A French language demonstration site is available at http://french.contentdmdemo.com.

Does CONTENTdm support EAD?
Yes, EAD finding aids can be added to CONTENTdm collections. Text from EAD finding aids is automatically extracted when the finding aid is added to a collection. The text that is extracted consists of the titles and names found in all levels of the file. The EAD finding aid is viewed in the Web interface by means of a XSLT style sheet.

What is an item? What is a compound object? How are they counted against my license level?
An item is any digital file that has been added to a CONTENTdm collection, such as a photograph, a page in a book, or one side of a postcard. The metadata describing a single item accompanies the single item, and together they are counted as one in the total number of items.

For example: If you have 500 photographs, each photograph (image with associated metadata) counts as one item. Therefore, 500 items are added to the collection and counted in the CONTENTdm license level total.

A compound object consists of two or more files bound together with an XML structure that enables the end user to retrieve them as a single object. Compound objects can be documents, books, the front and back of postcards, or six-sided views of three-dimensional objects. Each of the individual images or pages, as well as the resulting compound object itself, has associated metadata and is included in the item count.

For example:

  • If you have 10 two-sided postcards that would be counted as 30 items in the CONTENTdm license level total (i.e., 20 images, plus 10 items for each postcard's metadata description).
  • If you have scanned 20 diaries of 100 pages each, that would be counted as 2,020 items in the CONTENTdm license level total (i.e., 2,000 images, plus 20 items for each dairy's metadata description).

How can I tell how many items and objects are in a collection?
CONTENTdm provides reports that give collection administrators information about the item count, compound object count, file types, and build history.