ContentDM: Organizing & Accessing Digital Objects

Sarah Shippy Copeland Records Coordinator Cleveland State Community College Library

What is ContentDM?

OCLC product Tool for organizing and presenting digital objects on the web. Increasingly used by archival repositories as a solution for mounting digitized collections on the web.

Basic Process
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Upload a digital object to the server. Apply metadata. Group similar objects into collections. Publish!

Powerful Tools

Batch processing Metadata templates Thesaurus/authority file builder Customization:

Fields searched Fields displayed Integration with OCLC WorldCat Search engine indexing

Resource discovery tools:

Limitations

No preservation tools. No migration tools. Not the most sophisticated tool for managing compound objects. Item-level description requires extra time. Does not mirror current archival practice.

So, to recap:
The primary benefits of ContentDM are 1. easy description, 2. easy organization, 3. easy integration into existing resource discovery systems.

ContentDM @ Cleveland State Community College Library

Backbone of the Southeast Tennessee Digital Archive (SETDA).

Partnership of cultural institutions in Bradley, McMinn, Meigs, Monroe, and Polk counties. Access to ContentDM system Technical support Leadership Student assistance with digitization and description Collections for digitization

Cleveland State Library provides:

Partner institutions provide:

SETDA

Purpose: support educational endeavors Collection areas:

Historically illustrative materials from the five-county service area of CLSCC. Currently photos, soon expanding to include videos, oral histories, and textual documents.
Volunteer Voices best practices.

Digitization method:

ContentDM & Metadata

Dublin Core Goal: create a metadata structure, adhering to existing descriptive standards when necessary, to maximize resource discovery. Other requirements:

Data Data Data Data

about about about about

content and context provenance (acquisition) physical artifact digitization process

More on metadata design

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Learn the pitfalls of the schema. Learn the pitfalls of the search functionality of the content management system. Consider your audience. Seek out best practices.

Questions?

Sarah Shippy Copeland scopeland01@clevelandstatecc.edu www.clevelandstatecc.edu/setda/