CONTENTdm frequently asked questions

CONTENTdm uses a text-based search engine built using Internet standards and protocols. It is optimized 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, enabling rich metadata searching within or across collections. You do not need to purchase or support any additional databases to run CONTENTdm.

Data can be imported from other systems using a tab-delimited format. This facilitates batch import of existing collection items and metadata from Microsoft Excel, Access or other common data programs that support export of their data in delimited format.

Yes. CONTENTdm supports the export of data to XML or tab-delimited text format. 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, CONTENTdm collection metadata is accessible through OAI, if you choose to enable this function. This gives you a number of flexible options to link to other software, such as online catalog systems.

Yes. You can upload the metadata from your CONTENTdm server to WorldCat using the Digital Collection Gateway, a service included with your CONTENTdm license. Each time you upload metadata to WorldCat using the Gateway you are provided a WorldCat Sync report with the OCLC numbers of the records in WorldCat that correspond to the items in your CONTENTdm collection. You can use Connexion client and the list of OCLC numbers from the WorldCat Sync report to create a ocal save fileof MARC records from WorldCat to load into your local system.

CONTENTdm is fully compliant with OAI-PMH version 2.0. This includes collection-level selection to enable you 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.

Yes. CONTENTdm has an open and accessible data structure, and all items stored in CONTENTdm are described in XML, so it is easy to export data and use in many ways. For example, one of our users, the California Digital Library, developed a tool that transforms CONTENTdm XML exports into METS files conforming to a specific METS profile that they use for import into their state-wide system. The tool can be customized to produce METS files from any kind of standardized XML document.

All metadata in CONTENTdm is stored in XML. It is indexed using a text-based database developed by OCLC. The database uses an optimized search engine (indexing words and phrases) and has been designed to scale to handle billions of records. The CONTENTdm search engine is the same search engine that powers WorldCat and is fast, flexible and accurate.

Yes, CONTENTdm offers controlled vocabulary for consistent, uniform metadata entry. The software includes ten (10) integrated thesauri from OCLC Terminologies Service:

• Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) ®
• Canadian Subject Headings (CSH)
• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Type Vocabulary
• Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) ®
• Guidelines On Subject Access To Individual Works Of Fiction, Drama, Etc., 2nd ed., form and genre
• Māori Subject Headings / Nga Ūpoko Tukutuku
• Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) 2009
• Newspaper Genre List
• Thesaurus for Graphic Materials
• Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) ®

Additionally, you can import or develop your own, custom controlled vocabularies.

CONTENTdm stores digital items in file directories on the server. The individual items are accessible through a text-based index (database) that points to the items. This allows CONTENTdm to serve the items quickly, make them available with a unique URL, and allow extensive metadata records for each item.

Collections can be stored on distributed drives and can be administered remotely through a Web-based Administration interface. This enables multiple, distributed groups to collaborate on digital collection building. Users can submit new items and metadata descriptions through remote CONTENTdm Project Clients, Connexion client using Connexion digital import, or through a Web browser using a simple Web form.

CONTENTdm can scale to handle billions of items. The maximum number of items in a single collection is 16 million. The maximum number of metadata fields a user can create for each collection is 125. 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.

CONTENTdm provides text search capability across user-defined fields and multiple collections. CONTENTdm also has a browse capability that 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 text-based metadata. Additionally, CONTENTdm offers Unicode searching, relevancy sorting, spelling suggestions and faceted searching. For more information about searching, see end user experience.

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 just individual elements. Full text searching of documents is also supported.

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 files, AVI or MPEG video files, PDF files, EAD Finding Aids and even URLs. Large-format image collections also benefit from the JPEG2000 capability available with CONTENTdm.

CONTENTdm can handle different media types within a single collection (or database), so you can combine slides and photos, or other media such as text, video, or audio. You also can create separate databases, if necessary. CONTENTdm 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 software.

Images can be protected by restricting access to them using the CONTENTdm security features. Additionally, the Image Rights options enable 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.

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 also can choose to require permissions for items and metadata or to set permissions so that metadata is available to all users but permissions are required to view the associated file.

CONTENTdm relies on the underlying Web server for authentication services. The Apache LDAP authentication module enables authentication via LDAP. Consult the Apache/LDAP documentation for details.

CONTENTdm collections can be accessed and viewed on Mac or PC using current Web browsers. The CONTENTdm Server runs on Windows 2003 or 2008, Sun^™ Solaris^™ 9 or later (SPARC only), and Linux systems. The Project Client requires Microsoft^® Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or later, or 32-bit editions of Windows Vista. The Project Client has been successfully run on the Mac using PC emulators. For more information, see system requirements.

You can use Microsoft IIS or Apache Web servers to run CONTENTdm.

The recommended browsers for viewing the CONTENTdm Web interface and CONTENTdm Administration are Internet Explorer 6.0+ and Firefox 2.0+ on PC, and Safari 2.0+ Firefox 2.0+ on Mac. The recommended viewer for PDF files is Adobe^® Reader^® version 8.0.

The CONTENTdm Server has been tested for compatibility on Red Hat Enterprise 5.0 and CentOS 5.2. CONTENTdm also has been installed and run on: SUSE Linux 10.2 and versions of Debian, Ubuntu Server, Fedora and Aurox.

The CONTENTdm Project Client is currently being tested on Windows 7. Initial results found that the CONTENTdm Project Client performs as expected on the new operating system. However, as with any new operating system, unexpected issues may arise that we have not yet uncovered during our testing. We will continue testing on Windows 7 and announce support in early 2010.

The CONTENTdm Server is currently being tested on Windows Server 2008 R2. Initial results found that the CONTENTdm Server performs as expected on the new operating system. However, as with any new operating system, unexpected issues may arise that we have not yet uncovered during our testing. We will continue testing on Windows 7 and announce support in early 2010.

CONTENTdm has a well-defined query API that allows for custom client development. If your interface is used simply for accessing your media collection through basic queries, customization is very straightforward. To see examples of the thousands of collections and ways the CONTENTdm community uses CONTENTdm, see CONTENTdm in action.

It’s simple to load an existing database into CONTENTdm. If you can export your existing text description information into a tab-delimited file (most databases have this capability) and can identify one of the fields as the file name of the corresponding image, you can easily load data and items into CONTENTdm using the data import tools.

The University of Utah Marriott Library has developed open source software that adds Z39.50 compatibility to any CONTENTdm 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 processes incoming Z39.50 requests, converts them to appropriate CONTENTdm requests, and returns the results in either USMARC or XML format.

CONTENTdm fully supports Unicode and thus, fully supports entering, storing, displaying, and searching in all Unicode languages.

You can easily localize CONTENTdm Web Templates to support languages other than English. Currently, Web Templates are available in English, French, Spanish and German and can be localized to support other languages.

Yes, EAD finding aids can be added to CONTENTdm collections. Metadata is automatically extracted from EAD files based on an organization's custom metadata map. End users have two viewing options for the EAD items, one with a navigable table of contents, or display of the full EAD record in a single view. This full EAD view can be customized with an XSL file. EAD records are fully text searchable and search terms are highlighted within the EAD content.

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).

CONTENTdm provides reports that give collection administrators information about the item count, compound object count, file types, and build history.