April 2003Revised April 28th, 2005

Content Policy for UCSD Libraries’ Digital Asset Management System (DAMS)

1. Institutional scope of the UCSD Libraries Digital Asset Management System:

Digital Asset Management Systems, or DAMS, are being developed in industry and at universities to provide for the management of digital content files and their associated metadata. A DAMS is “an integrated suite of infrastructure components used to capture, catalog, store, and manage digital assets, and to expose those assets to creative tools for producing video, audio, Web, and print content.”1

Related concepts are institutional repositories (DSpace at MIT, Digital Repository Service or DRS at Harvard), media asset management systems, content management systems, document management systems, integrated library systems, and data warehouses.

While some universities are developing open institutional repositories (e.g. MIT, Harvard University), the UCSD Libraries’ DAMS will initially be a selected library repository with content undergoing the same rigorous selection procedures as for other library content.

2. Purposes of the UCSD Libraries DAMS:

a) To store, manage, and preserve digital objects2 (digital content files and their associated metadata expressed as METS) managed by the UCSD Libraries.

b) To support retrieval, discovery, use, and reuse of digital objects managed by the UCSD Libraries.

c) To serve as a conduit for transferring digital objects into the CDL Digital Preservation Repository (DPR).

Specific criteria and priorities for functionality of the UCSD Libraries DAMS, including preservation and migration, authentication, input and export, retrieval, rendering, discovery, use, reuse, de-accessioning, and metrics, are addressed in a

1 Alan McCord “Overview of Digital Asset Management Systems” (EDUCAUSE, Sept. 6, 2002)2 Terminology throughout this document conforms with the OAC Digital Objects: Glossary http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/glossary/

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separate document (see “Outline of Functional Requirements for a Digital Asset Management and Access System,” March 27, 2003).

3. What can be Deposited:

a) Digital objects that are part of the UCSD Libraries collections and not licensed from third parties

b) Digital objects with persistent value, selected to support UCSD research, instruction, and community service

c) Digital objects expressed as METS

d) Digital objects intended to be made accessible to the UCSD user community

Preservation assurance may vary by format. The CDL Digital Preservation Repository (DPR) will provide for the long-term preservation of UCSD digital assets.

Specific criteria and priorities for digitization and digital collection development are not addressed in this document3. Priorities for building digital collections will be in concert with the existing UCSD Libraries collection development policies that support the University’s academic curriculum and research programs.

3 A list of useful policies and guidelines for digitization can be found at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/

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