>Listers,
>
>TPW, as everyone in the world, is moving from a paper to digital world. I am
>the supervisor of a studio that produces the graphics for exhibits, waysides
>and some publications. When we are finished with a job we burn all the files
>to CD as an archive. What we would like to do is have a way to catalogue our
>archived jobs AND the photos, illustrations and maps from those jobs. For
>instance, it would be nice to be able to search a data base to see if we
>have any pictures of hummingbirds from a previous project and what CD they
>are on.
>
>Has anyone wrestled with this problem successfully?

This sounds like it is less an archive problem than a digital asset
management problem.

I am assuming that while some of the materials you use are your own,
most of the graphics are drawn from other sources so you have digital
copies that have usage restrictions.   Your goal is to be able to see
what you may have used on a project in the past that might be easily
re-purposed for the current project.

Is this correct?  If so, "traditional" collection or archive software
may not be the best solution.  There is another whole class of
product created just for digital asset management. These products
will do things like search a CD or server drive for documents and
images and create database records for each item with thumbnails and
pointers to the originals.  You can add other data as needed to help
with retrieval.  One of the better ones is Cumulus, but there are
several other good options.

You can do the same thing with a database or a collection management
system, but the automated tools in the specialized systems will
likely save you a lot of time.

Good luck.

--

Guy Hermann
---------------------------------
Verner Johnson & Associates
Museum Architects & Planners
http://www.vernerjohnson.com
Boston, Massachusetts
voice: 617-437-6262
    fax: 617-437-1272

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