Digital Asset Management for Museums

Our cultural heritage institutions live today in a world that persistently blends the alternating currents of the known and ＂touchable＂ world with an immediate and intimate digital unfolding with shapes and intentions beyond what we can know.

These digital twins may start as just that - twins - but often quickly become different. A scan of a sculpture can be used for research, to deepen a visitor’s sight of what’s underneath, become a model for a licensed derivative destined for the gift shop, or help curators plan an exhibition. Our museum holdings throughout the world require careful management - from access, to storage, to conservation, and they create the wonder we experience in the hands of gifted museum staff. Our museums’ digital assets demand the same level of attention, concern, legacy preservation as they embrace our minds and infuse experience from the invisible reach of ＂ones and zeroes＂ made manifest and all around us.

This is the realization at the core of Digital Asset Management for Museums. The chapters in this book will guide readers through strategies for unlocking an asset’s potential, implementing digital assets into cultural institutions successfully, managing potential failures in implementation, and training museum staff to utilize digital assets effectively. Digital asset management strategies consider the ever-evolving nature of technology, which makes this book’s approach relevant to the needs of cultural institutions today as well as to institutions’ needs for the future.

Jessica Herczeg-Konecny is the Lead Technical Analyst, Digital Asset Management, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 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 fifteen years in archives, collections management, and rights and reproductions, with a focus on digital asset management for the past ten years. Prior to the Met Jessica worked in DAM at the Chicago History Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her professional development activities have included serving as chair of the Museum Computer Network (MCN) DAM Special Interest Group as well as presentations at conferences for MCN and Henry Stewart DAM events.

Margaret C. McKee is the Digital Asset Manager at the Menil Collection where she manages the museum’s first Digital Asset Management System. She holds a BAFA in Art History from the University of New Mexico and an MS in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to digital asset management, her professional interests include intellectual property and cultural heritage imaging. Professional development activities have included panel presentations at conferences including the Visual Resources Association (VRA) and Henry Stewart DAM and Museums, serving as chair of MCN’s Intellectual Property SIG, and serving on the boards of the VRA and the Open Copyright Education Advisory Network (OCEAN).