Think big, act small. Digital Asset Management in the Van Gogh Museum Marianne Peereboom

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1 Think big, act small Digital Asset Management in the Van Gogh Museum Marianne Peereboom

2 Van Gogh Museum Some facts & figures Established 1973 by Ir. V.W. van Gogh, Van Gogh s nephew Core collection: VG s estate; new acquisitions C. 300 staff Number of visitors per year: c. 1,5 million

3 Van Gogh Museum: Collections 205 of the c. 800 know paintings by Van Gogh C. 270 paintings by contemporaries (Hendrik Willem) Mesdag Collection: 350 art works and 500 craft objects (e.g. ceramics) Works on paper Drawings by Van Gogh (500) and contemporaries (680) Print collection Japanese prints (500) Magazine illustrations collected by VG (1500)

4 Letters, documents, archival materials: The extant correspondence of Van Gogh 902 letters, with 25 related documents, a total of 927 objects Only 52 letters, 2 incomplete letters and 1 document NOT in VGM some in private collections- Family correspondence and documentation (a few hundred) Other letters (e.g. Theo s business correspondence)

incomplete letters and 1 document NOT in VGM some in private collections- Family

5 Van Gogh Museum: Collections Library collection special collections and artists books Sculpture and objects (120) half of which coins and medals Various e.g. furniture, easels

6 Topics of today Our photo studio & Rich Digital Imaging Our DAM system: ambition Our DAM system: reality check

7 VGM photo studio Before 2009 Digitization outsourced > scanning ectachromes Start of color management and proofing Focus on output, not on capture In house photo studio operational standards based Van Gogh Museum & Pictura: guinea pigs for new Metamorfoze guidelines Rich digital imaging

on capture 2009 - In house photo studio operational standards based Van

10 Digital Asset Management (part 1) ambition

11 Digital Asset Management System System: Cumulus vendor: Canto (Germany) Proof of concept implementation phase 1 go live implementation phase 2 Phase 1 Cumulus contains: All object records derived from Adlib (both collections and library) All (or most) Photo studio images (c ) Go Live All internal staff can use (read only) the photostudio images through a web client, can download, use and share those images. Rights & Repro can use DAM to send requested images to third parties through download link.

12 Phase 2 Goal: add departments, one at the time + add new types of assets Requires effort/resources from department! Requirements which assets do they have? how are assets now stored, named, used, shared etc.? requirements for usage, sharing, search etc.? are any additional metadata required? changes to DAM configuration needed? which metadata can be created via ingestion rules, by manual bulk edit? work to be done by department before migration (clean-up, standardization of file names etc.)

? requirements for usage, sharing, search etc.? are any additional metadata required? changes to DAM configuration needed?

13 Phase 2 (cont.) Adapt Cumulus Ingest existing files Rights management - are the assets to be shared with other departments? Train department & super-user for department and off they go. Time consuming & labour intensive! But great benefits in terms of management, reusability, durability, sharing, collaboration etc.

14 metadata CIS (Adlib) collectie informatie DAM (Cumulus) CMS

15 How Adlib object records and assets are connected: 1. All Adlib object records (only predefined metadata fields) are imported in Cumulus (also library records) 2. Assets are ingested. 3. Cumulus matches object number in file name with Adlib record. 4. Cumulus copies the metadata from the Adlib object record to the asset s db-record in Cumulus. 5. When there is no match the asset does not get the Adlib metadata set (but it will have other metadata sets).

Assets are ingested. 3. Cumulus matches object number in file name with Adlib record. 4.

16 _gbca Cropped = true Image status = approved image for print Exposure = beauty light _r Exposure = raking light _r2 Raking light type = top right _vs_ Verso = True _wfr Frame = Work in frame

17 Migration phase 2 Example: Restauration Department

18 Adlib record: blue background Preferred image (web): beige background

21 Filters: exposure = beautylight + cropped = true

22 Filter: detail = true

23 Preview Zoom Info Download Collection basket

24 Digital Asset Management (part 2) reality check

25 organizational reality check

26 A lot going on at the same time.. New financial systems New technical infrastructure New webstrategy new website New Entrance..

27 Help your users find out what they want. Working with a DAM system means a totally different workflow. Gathering requirements from colleagues who are in the old workflow mindset.. Or see DAM totally from an Adlib perspective Risk: turning DAM into shadow CIS or vice versa Departments feel proprietory about their own images but don t try to solve technically (through rights management) what should be solved by cooperation, rules for use, respecting each other s expertise. People feel that all the different assets will cause pollution in the system > also not be solved by rights management but by filtering options

28 Other organizational issues Preparation (e.g. rather elaborate system for coding of the file names paid off)! DAM vs DMS > grey area - criterium collection related

29 technical reality check

30 Connection CIS DAM Adlib is moving target new version, data cleaning, technical Parent-child relationship between objects to be replicated in Cumulus Pushing info about new/changed records from Adlib turned out not to be possible (although promised by Adlib at start of project) Result: extra effort to program pull mechanism by vendor Less efficient Problems in the Adlib structure (under the hood) came to light as a result of the import process

31 Connection CIS / DAM (cont.) Cumulus ran into trouble because of dead links in Adlib Object-numbers need to be future proof & same as in file name p v/1962 > p v1962 Other technical issues Production/replication environment expensive, but replicates database but not configuration?! (Unrelated) technical issues impacting on Cumulus environment Proof of concept > don t leave any loose ends.

32 Think big act small Think big (or: create a rich digital resource) - Rich digital imaging + - DAM for management of all collection related multimedia not just preferred images of collection Act small (or: avoid drowning in complexity) - Implementation in micro-managed small steps. - Small core team connecting IT and business expertise works well - The devil is in the detail!

33 That s all, folks!

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