At ALA Midwinter in January the University of Washington's University Libraries Digital Initiatives Program demonstrated version 3.0 of Content, the media asset management software developed by the Center for Information Systems Optimization (CISO) in the Department of Electrical Engineering. The software was used to mount "American Indians of the Pacific Northwest' on the Library of Congress's American Memory site.
Content provides tools for organizing, cataloging, indexing, displaying, and managing graphical collections. It can
- handle multiple collections within one system
- acquire, annotate, and upload multimedia data
- store database information on the server and make it available to clients over a network
- administer a Web interface
- use metadata. that meets national standards for indexing each separate collection
- search clients in HTML and JAVA
- search within one collection or across multiple collections to allow clients to work over the Web using standard http protocols
- perform boolean searches across any or all fields
- use XML markup
The software is scalable from a few hundred items to databases with millions of objects. The Dublin Core Metadata element set is used to create basic object cataloging providing a flexible template customized for each collection. Collection-specific fields a remapped to Dublin Core. Content uses a text-based search engine optimized to handle multimedia. It allows searching across user-defined fields. Searches can be performed on a single field or multiple fields in a collection and across multiple collections on a Content server,
Among Version 3.0's new features:
- The software can now handle compound documents such as book pages, text and images, and multiple views of an object-allowing search and display of the document as a whole. If full text is added during collection creation from OCR or transcription, the software supports full-text searching within the document. Search results show highlighted search words.
- Content can be used to create a "simple document" or a "picture cube," with pictures attached to the sides of a cube that can be rotated and zoomed. Content's creators expect to added support to allow refined searches within a complex document, newspaper articles, musical scores, and others.
- High-quality digital images can be stored and indexed. One scan can be used to create both a full-resolution version and a lower-resolution version, for faster online display. Version 3.0 automatically archives the full-resolution version, then generates a lower-resolution version and miniaturized, thumbnail, copy for search and retrieval. The software places the full-resolution image in an archival volume and associates it with the lower-resolution version. Archival images can be stored on CD-ROM, DVD, or online in a networked directory.
- Enhancements to the authenticated vocabulary feature that restricts contents of a defined text field to a given set of terms allow authenticated vocabulary with logical phrases in addition to single words. Shipped with 3.0 is the "Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphical Materials I," which can be used to authenticate vocabulary for any field. Other authority lists can be imported from standard text files for use as an authenticated vocabulary.
- Support for Dublin Core qualifiers has been added, sharpening the semantic precision of the existing Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. Any field in a collection can now be mapped to a Dublin Core element (qualified or unqualified), through a fully integrated search process for queries across multiple collections.
- The HTML client has been redesigned and integration improved with general Web pages. The Client appears within the Web browser, with no loss of continuity from the Web site.
A strategic alliance between OCLC and CISO will ensure interoperability between OCLC's SiteSearch catalog offering and the Content The necessary software link is free to Content users.
A 60-day trial is available.
CISO - University of Washington: phone, 206-543-5604; fax, 206-543-3483;
e-mail, content@ciso.engr.washington.edu;
Web, content.engr.washington.edu.