... and what lesson can you learn from here?
An organisation is going to streamline their operations by reducing some software systems that are used for managing their collections of images, manuscripts, research papers, audio and video recordings. They decide to migrate all data and digital files into a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system that was installed by DIW two years ago.
I was invited to propose a solution to batch migrate these records automatically, particularly the text metadata. In other words, they want to avoid having to copy and paste the 20,000 records from one system to another. Yes, who wants to do that?
Unfortunately, after evaluating the data structure and the digital files that are kept in piles of CDs, I have to tell them the sad news that they have to copy and paste the 20,000 records manually.
What could they have done right at the beginning when they started to use a software to manage their digital collections? The points described below are not just applicable if you are using a software system, but also applicable if you are using Excel for metadata entry.