 Can one system actually be a platform for managing all aspects of the digital collections life cycle? This is what we've been working towards at the University of Calgary with our digital asset management system. I'm Catherine Radick. I'm the director for digital services at the University of Calgary, working in the institutional repository, digital collections, and scholarly publishing support. I'm also now a huge digital asset management system advocate for digital collections. In this recording, I'll describe our digital collections at the University of Calgary. You feel working definition of digital asset management systems and common features. Talk about our data life cycle for digital collection building and ongoing access and summarize how we are using our digital asset management system, each step of the way in this life cycle. We've been building digital collections since the late 1990s. Our collections are curated for many of our primary holdings across the library, museums, and archival collections. We also work with researchers and faculty and community partners to build collections of interest to Southern Albertans, Canadians, and the global population. Our subject areas are diverse, but focus on our collection strengths here. And we use Cortex by Orange Logic as our digital collections platform. Cortex is a digital asset management system, a software system that stores, shares, and manages digital assets. When we were seeking this kind of system, we had many requirements that fell into these general themes. First, we needed a system that we can upload assets into very easily by different team members across different units or external users be able to relate that content and organize it based on physical collection structures, as well as subject or thematic based structures. We were looking for a cloud hosted service with the ability to sync locally. We wanted to define how many copies were stored, as well as fixedly checking. We needed a system that had very granular permissions, a defined permission structure for assets based on user role or account or time to access. We wanted a really robust reporting system by asset workflow, usage, description, etc. We have some tailored workflows at the University of Calgary that we wanted to replicate within this system with a task space or approval based kind of workflow. We use a lot of different controlled vocabularies that we wanted to import into the system or create new controlled vocabularies, automate some descriptive elements via AI tools like keyword extraction, facial recognition, or optical character recognition, and have the ability to edit metadata at an individual object level or via batch metadata editing. This needs to be the access point both for our open access functions, as well as our licensed functions. And we wanted the ability to deliver assets upon request for certain kinds of content that we could only provide upon request through an order workflow. Finally, this system needed to have very robust search and browse capability and integrate with our discovery system, Primo, and with search engines like Google. Our data lifecycle for digital collections falls into these eight steps. Plan, create, collect, process, analyze, store, preserve, and share. I'll be going through each of these steps in more detail and how we have used Cortex, our digital asset management system at each step. When we plan a new digital collections project, we receive project applications or intake applications and create project documentation like a project charter, metadata templates, rights overview documentation, workflow documentation, and a data management plan. In Cortex, we're able to create unique assets to capture information as we need to for different types of objects. So we created a project asset to capture information about new digital collection projects for our planning stage and throughout project activity. You can see all of our projects at a glance in this grid like view and get an overview of project statuses. New projects can be submitted through a web form interface, giving us initial intake information. In each project, we track status, add description about that project, add specific roles and users, and we can even communicate with team members through our commenting feature. We can also upload project documentation. Our create step includes project teams or staff creating born digital or digitized objects. Most of our object creation happens outside of the digital collections platform, but we can still use this platform to track our creation status, physical locations for objects, and create initial records or placeholders for later. In this example, we're tracking our digitization at a box level. I can see that we have two boxes in digitization, two are in file editing, and one is not yet started. Operators can add notes if needed for tracking, and they can add in new lines for tracking as needed. If they had any other data that they want to track at the stage, we can add in columns for that too. Collecting can include organizing or ingesting objects into our digital collection system. Our tracking content and cortex for a digital project is simple and straightforward. Team members can drag and drop content into the appropriate folder. We can request uploads via an invite to upload email directly into a particular folder. And if content needs to be reorganized, that can happen by dragging and dropping to the correct folder, similar to an Explorer window. This includes data cleaning, object editing, metadata creation, right clearance, and tracking. We track all of our process steps in this system. So, for example, if we needed to edit files, most of our file editing tasks happen in local applications. We may edit files locally and re-upload the newly edited files as a new version of the asset or tracked within the system. Or we'll sync the files between local applications and cortex. Both have the same effect of adding new versions of the same asset. Adding metadata can happen at an object level through data entry. Each collection may also have different metadata description needs. We've created grid views per collection. Team members can edit directly in the system at an object or batch of objects. Or they can edit via spreadsheet. Download directly through the system and upload edited sheets back into the system. Tools like speech-to-text transcription for AV or optical character recognition can happen directly in cortex. Our analysis step includes profiling the collection through reports and data about the assets. Understanding a particular set of assets at a time is very helpful through reports and statistics. For this example, I can check out a dashboard of what is in these folders and understand change over time. If I needed to export metadata, I can do that via reports. And if I needed more in-depth information about storage, tasks, and events that happen to a set of assets, I can do that through our administrative reports. The reports have been particularly helpful for us as we perform quality control steps in our digital collection development. Storing includes where a copy of the data or assets are stored for retrieval, use, and disaster recovery. By default, we rely on our cloud storage system integrated in cortex. Information about each asset storage location and derivatives are available from the asset itself. Our backup and redundancy plan for cloud storage is set as per configuration needs. We also have the option of syncing to local storage if we ever needed extra disaster recovery. Our preservation step includes bit-level, long-term storage, migrating to a stable preservation format, performing file fixity, and creating preservation metadata. When we get a collection ready for launch, we only keep the files and assets that will be needed for end-user access. End-users could be both internal staff and external users. For the assets that we keep in cortex, we have two copies in different locations. All content is verified via fixity checks, and integrity is monitored. Final formats are characterized, and we have robust metadata kept for all of our assets. Not all content that is produced during the collection creation process is kept in our digital collection system. All content for a particular object that we want to preserve but isn't necessarily needed for end-user access goes into our longer-term preservation system called LiveSafe. We send content from cortex to LiveSafe via an API integration. Longer-term migration and normalizations happen in that preservation system. But here, we can track the preservation status and access to the preservation object in that system. Sharing includes making the data or assets available to end-users. We share each asset as per our individual copyright and donor agreements collected during the project. Our digital collection site features over a million published and accessible assets. Users can search, browse, and share. And each object has a display and interaction customized to that particular asset and subject type. So, for example, here is a copyright open educational resource module. You're going to see some custom metadata fields for this type of object. Users' rights information and restrictions. Access to other files in this package that you can click through to. Here's a video object, and you'll see that there's a player, and you have some features like closed captioning. Here's an example of a photograph from our Glamble Archives collection. Again, you're seeing some customized metadata fields and ask a question button and some usage rights information. You're also seeing some conceptually similar images related to this object based on metadata. And finally, here's an example of an invertebrate. Again, a custom set of metadata fields available for this object. You've also pulled out the taxonomy information. User rights is available. And you'll see this specimen details tab. As this was created as a research collection, we have all the research metadata available for any users to access. If a user wants to request more access to an object, they can add it to their cart and order directly through this site, and it will go into our shopping cart workflow that is also directly embedded within Cortex. Prior to Cortex, you're working in many different systems and tracking projects and spreadsheets and offline databases, as well as email. Now we are able to manage all of our digital collections throughout their life cycle, directly in one solution, creating a really sustainable environment for us to go forward. If you have any questions about anything in this recording, feel free to contact me.