Archival Services and Assessments
Don’t know where to start? The Digital Archive Group can assist with the upfront task of assessing the collection, encouraging meetings with internal stakeholders and devising a strategy for organization, preservation and ultimately, digitization and access.
Assessment tasks may include:
- Collection and condition survey
- Inventory and appraisal
- Preservation needs
- Discovery
- Identification of “high priority” assets
- End user needs, requirements and security
- Evidence of descriptive metadata
- Digitization and access
- Hosting of cloud-based digital asset management platform
Importance of Discovery Phase
Archival services
Most of our clients tap into our depth of archival services which include:
- Processing and cataloging
- Preservation and rehousing
- Story Telling & Social Media
- Digitization
- Metadata, optical character recognition, METS/ALTO
- Digital asset management
- Archival management
- Research and reference services
- Storytelling through social media
- Temperature controlled archival storage
Digital Asset Management (DAM)
A Digital Asset Management system, most commonly known as a DAM, is critical to the success of your digital archive. The DAM organizes your content, makes it easier to search and download assets and provides access to the various users throughout your organization. There are literally hundreds of DAM solutions on the market. TDAG can help you make sense of it all.
Breaking down the silos is where we start; helping you identify where your assets are currently being stored and in what departmental repositories they reside. Once your historical content is digitized, you will now be combing your newly digitized content with digital born content with a goal of providing all users within your organization with a Single Source of Truth.
The creation of a digital archive is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The workflow and output of each project must be tailored to the needs of each client. If your company already has an in-house DAM or asset management software, TDAG will guarantee 100 % accuracy in our digitization and tagging efforts to ensure metadata is embedded to be searchable in your asset management platform. We might even be able to improve your current solution or teach you a few new tricks!
In most cases, a cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) solution is the most logical resource for a large company or organization which relies heavily on image assets for repurposing into the brand, marketing, communications, social media, etc.
Our preferred vendor for DAM is https://www.imagerelay.com/
Metadata, Taxonomy & OCR
An important step in creating a digital archive is defining a metadata and taxonomy strategy to insure the most accurate retrieval of digital files. TDAG customizes this strategy for each client by working closely with the organization and the potential users of the digital archive.
If you are not familiar with metadata and taxonomy, let’s take a moment to highlight the differences:
Metadata is the key information that makes the asset searchable through keywords. Metadata goes beyond the basic file name to further describe and define the asset. Sometimes that information is written on the document, image, etc. and other times it must be translated from actually viewing the item. Upon scanning or digitizing an asset, you want to make sure you “embed” the keywords into the newly created digital file in order to make it searchable.
Taxonomy is the formal structure that organizes your content and assets into a specialized file system, either physically or digitally. Assigning your content taxonomy will make it easier to search for within a DAM when you are not sure of what keywords to use. TDAG will create the most efficient taxonomy and metadata structure to insure that will increase the search capabilities of the asset in a variety of access-based or DAM software platforms.
In order for documents to become keyword searchable they must be converted to PDF files with OCR applied. OCR (optical character recognition) is technology that enables you to digitize and convert different types of text-based documents into editable and searchable data. If you are creating a digital archive, which includes documents, you want to make sure that OCR is used to enable keyword search.
Storytelling and Social Media
History is an important element in building your brand and connecting with your customers. As with the popularity of social media, reacting with speed and relevance is everything. Posting a story and creating a “buzz” at the right time can motivate thousands of fans or customers to engage with your brand within minutes.
At TDAG, we amplify and extend brand legacy through creation of a digital archive and visual access to a wide variety of legacy archival content that supports storytelling, fan engagement, social media, monetization, book/documentary research, museum exhibits and anniversary planning. We have a special group of researchers and content archivists who work with our clients to curate and package digital assets into relevant program “buckets” to render archival related digital content faster and easier to share. For heritage driven brands with a deep customer fan base connected to social media, this type of programming keeps customers engaged with the brand and extends brand loyalty.