Galdos Systems created the INdicio™ Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) using a web-service architecture in order to build the most flexible and extensible solution possible.
Unlike many DAMS solutions, the asset model (i.e. the set of asset types, together with their properties and relationships) that defines the content structure of the INdicio DAMS is completely under the Administrator’s control. INdicio supports a flexible and extensible DAMS information model that describes the assets in the registry, with registry objects for documents, still photos, video and audio clips, trademarks, licenses, and original art work, etc. This model can be modified or added to at any time to accommdate new types of assets using the graphical, web-based client provided.
Classifications and Collections
Galdos INdicio DAMS allows assets to be classified under any number of classifications (or taxonomies) at the same time. A license, for example, might be classified according to its type (e.g. Creative Commons) and also by its state (e.g. Expired) at the same time. Assets can be associated to one another using any number of user defined associations. These associations can be traversed, searched (e.g. “find the objects associated to a given asset”), and graphically displayed.
Assets can be grouped into user-defined collections. Collections can contain other collections; collections can also be assigned properties, be classified, or be associated to other resources. Collections can be deleted at the touch of button without impacting the members of the collection.
Assets can have geographic properties such as location and extent. For example: a photograph could have the location where it was acquired; a tourist region could have a polygon describing its extent; and so forth. Objects with geographic properties can be displayed on maps, and searched using geographic-based requests (e.g. find all photographs in a region drawn on a map).
Asset classifications can have properties, and can be associated to one another and to other objects, etc. This is also true of every category in the classification.
Notifications
Automated notification is a core feature of the DAMS. Any change to a DAMS object can automatically trigger a notification to be sent to a user by SMS, e-mail, etc. Since this is a plug-in architecture, new notification types can be easily supported as they come along (e.g. Twitter). This can be used to notify administrators about the expiration of a license, or about the arrival of a new image or video clip.
Additional Features
The INdicio DAMS includes a number of client applications for finding, viewing, and managing assets. All clients are web-based and have been designed with maximum ease-of-use in mind, incorporating features such as graphical query builders, map overlays, and thumbnails, and graphical browsing. Image and video assets can have thumbnails associated with them. These are automatically computed from the source data, and assist the user in quickly locating an image or video or interest, or grouping them into logical collections.
Every asset has a life cycle state. For example, a photograph acquired in the field and uploaded by a photographer would be automatically assigned the state of “Submitted”. Following administrative review, the state might be changed to “Reviewed” or “Approved” at which point it becomes available to other users.
The DAMS provides an audit trail for all changes to DAMS content, and records the user name (from authentication), the time of the change, and the object effected. The same mechanism can be used to audit all searches and requests for asset content.
The built-in Harvester utility enables the batch loading of images, video, audio, etc. The Harvester has a plug-in architecture so that it is easy to support new media types and new media formats. The Harvester automatically loads assets and extracts and loads metadata, including creating associations and classifications wherever possible.
Custom report generation is available through integration of INdicio with BIRT – the Business Intelligence Reporting Tool from the Eclipse Foundation (http://www.eclipse.org/birt). Sophisticated reports can be created which can include nearly any property found on metadata records in the registry, as well as audit trail detail.
