Hello all,

We are looking to gather information on Universities in the UK using or planning to use Digital Asset Management Systems to manage digital assets important in some sense to conducting the business of the University (including, learning and teaching, research, information provision, and administration). Definitions of both digital assets and digital asset management are given at the end of this email.

We would be very grateful if you would answer the following questions:

  1.. What is the name of your institution and which department are you associated with?
  2.. Is your institution currently managing its digital assets, or is it planning to do so? Please give what details you can.

If the answer to question 2 is yes, would you be willing/able to provide more information on the initiative? Such as who is the best contact? What digital asset management software are you using? What level of resourcing is being made available? And also if there is a URL where we can discover further information?

Please send your reply to [log in to unmask] rather than to the list. We will post a summary of our results to the list in due course.

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Definitions:

What are digital assets?

In the context of the University, digital assets are anything in digital form relevant, either to the current and future conduct of its academic, academic-related, administrative, and outreach activities, or to ensuring the continued availability of historical data of significance to either the University, or to the community at large. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, various formats of video and audio files, still images, 3D constructs and diagrams, animations, datasets and databases, web sites, and text files, and it encompasses materials relevant to teaching, research, record-keeping and archival activities, information provision, marketing, promotion, and knowledge transfer, administration, and the meeting of legal and other responsibilities.

What is digital asset management?

Essentially, it is the use of systems and procedures designed to manage the lifecycle of University owned or licensed digital objects from creation or purchase onwards, a process that will either end when an object is discarded or replaced, or, in some cases, be a continuing current and/or preservation commitment. It involves systems and staff control of processes such as ingest or creation, cataloguing and indexing (including the capture of essential metadata), packaging and re-packaging of digital materials (e.g. for teaching), re-purposed materials, electronic and hardcopy published materials, monitoring content accuracy and currency, controlling and monitoring copyright issues, dissemination to all appropriate staff and or customers or business partners, access management, the maintenance of the integrity of both the original and any resource and of access mechanisms, staff permissions control, selection for wider exploitation (e.g. through sale or open access knowledge transfer), selection for discard or replacement or digital preservation, digital preservation, and a variety of other functions. It will typically involve a range of staff with a variety of functions - legal expertise, rights management expertise, metadata expertise, teaching, research, or administrative expertise, commercial exploitation expertise, to name but a few - managing a variety of digital and content types within a variety of more or less complex workflows. Its aim is to optimise the value of the assets and eliminate the risks involved in not doing so.
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Thanks in advance,

Stéphane Séchaud

Centre for Digital Library Research
University of Strathclyde
Livingstone Tower
26 Richmond Street
Glasgow, G1 1XH

Tel: +44 (0) 141 548 5854

The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number: SC015263