Chair
Rachael Winter Durant, Head of Digital Assets & Collections Information Systems, Portland Art Museum
Rachael Winter Durant oversees the day-to-day administration and strategic development of the Digital Assets Management System (DAMS), Collections Management System (CMS), and Online Collections. She promotes standards and procedures that enable people and institutions to engage digitally with cultural objects in the present and into the future. To advance this engagement, she focused her early career in librarianship on digital accessibility, the description of visual resources, and digital preservation.
Rachael earned her Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington and began working as the Digital Assets Manager at PAM in July 2017. Prior to her position at PAM, she wrangled assets and institutional histories at an independent, global creative agency and an arts education nonprofit, studied and practiced technical writing, and supported nonprofit fundraising campaigns through project management and data programming. She recently oversaw PAM’s migration to a new DAMS, and is currently evolving workflows to allow the Museum to move towards an open access image policy and IIIF implementation.
Co-Chair
Jessica Herczeg-Konecny, Digital Asset Manager, Detroit Institute of Arts
Jessica Herczeg-Konecny is the Digital Asset Manager at the Detroit Institute of Arts. After undergraduate work in English and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Jessica obtained a master’s degree in Public History from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She has been working in the museum industry for over ten years in archives, collections management, rights and reproductions, and digital asset management. Jessica implemented the DIA’s first-ever Digital Asset Management System, founded and chairs the Metadata and Digital Assets Standards Committee, supervises rights management, and trains users and content creators for the DAM.
Mission Statement
To support knowledge sharing, strategy, content development, and evaluation of Digital Asset Management strategies for the cultural sector. To develop and document best-practices for DAM and DAMS based on knowledge gained through implementation, use and feedback on working systems.
Communication
The group communicates primary via our Basecamp project discussions– join us! and the MCN-L listserv (with “[DAM SIG:]” in the subject line). Google hangouts are also available for large group discussions.
Interested in joining the DAM SIG?
Fill out Google form here, someone will be in touch shortly.
DAM Resources
Books
Key Online Resources
- Is this software really a DAMS?
- Is my organization really ready for DAM? DAM Maturity Model
- Collections Trust Implementation Guide for DAM in Museums
The DAM Conference
Webinars and Online Workshops
DAMS RFP/Selection Process Best Practices
Kew Garden’s RFD process as implemented by Kristina Herz.
She summarized her process in a journal article:
Evaluating DAM vendors through customized scenario demonstrations while keeping your stakeholders engaged. Kristina Herz, Digital Asset Coordinator, Herbarium, Library, Art & Archives Directorate, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
JDMM (2014-15:3,1)
Archival Tools
Great set of open source archival inventory tools on AV Preserve website.