I. Policy scope

This document establishes the UT Libraries Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) mission statement and purpose, and describes the policies governing the selection, curation, management, and retention of materials within the system. Sections articulating the roles, expectations, and permissions for system users, as well as distinctions between various repositories operated by UT Libraries provide clarity for users making decisions about content and work assignments.
The intended audience of the DAMS policy is UT Libraries staff, as the DAMS is solely intended as a staff-facing tool. The DAMS does not provide an actionable interface for library patrons or the general public. Content held in the DAMS can be made publicly accessible through the Collections portal. The portal is a separate system providing a 'view' of select digital assets, with browsing and search functionality aimed at patrons.

To limit the scope of this policy, it will reference other relevant guidelines or policies, for instance concerning copyright statements, persistent identifiers, long-term preservation, or metadata harvesting by content aggregation portals. Some of these other guidelines or policies might still be emerging, within UT Libraries as well as in the professional field. This policy will therefore undergo regular review cycles to update references and to adapt to other guidelines.

II. Mission statement

In support of the UT Libraries Mission, the DAMS serves as the system for Libraries staff to describe, store, manage, and expose digital assets.

III. Collection scope and selection criteria

The DAMS facilitates management and preservation of, as well as access to, UT Libraries digital collections that support the teaching, research, and scholarship needs of the University of Texas community. The criteria established here provide guidance to collection curators to use in determining what content may be added to the DAMS.

In addition to the DAMS, UT Libraries manages several other repositories, some in cooperation with campus partners. Each repository is designed for certain types of content and users, and may or may not integrate with the DAMS over time. When considering whether to ingest content into the DAMS, staff should determine whether the content would be best suited for another repository instead. As an overarching guideline, the DAMS should not include any collection or asset that is deemed exclusively better suited for another UT Libraries repository.

Each digital asset stored in the DAMS will:

Support teaching, research, or scholarship in the University of Texas community, or meet an obligation or requirement established by applicable legal requirements, contracts, or memoranda of understanding.
Be as complete a representation of the original resource as feasibly possible. The following examples help explain this criterion:
- A monograph in its entirety, not one page or chapter
- A journal article in its entirety, not an abstract
- A photographic print in its entirety, not a crop
- A sound/audiovisual recording in its entirety, not an excerpt
Be intended for perpetual digital stewardship by UT Libraries
Have rights determinations defined by the DAMS collection curators in adherence to US copyright law
Have curatorial ownership defined to ensure management of the asset over time
Adhere to standards and best practices for born-digital assets and digital reformatting of analog assets (at time of creation) as outlined through trusted sources such as the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative, or as established by UT Libraries Digital Stewardship
Meet expectations for supported file types for digitized and born-digital assets as detailed in the DAMS documentation
Meet or exceed metadata requirements (including rights determinations) as detailed in the DAMS documentation

IV. Stewardship

All objects included in the DAMS are intended to be retained permanently upon acceptance into the DAMS. The DAMS is not for temporary storage for digital items.

DAMS assets should be permanently deleted ("purged") from the system only if technical reasons make it necessary to re-ingest assets, rather than updating existing assets, or if retaining the content would constitute a liability risk to the libraries. Collection curators make the decision to permanently delete content from the DAMS in consultation with the DAMS Managers.

Digital assets and/or metadata stored in the DAMS can be made accessible to the general public through the Collections portal. Publicly accessible assets and metadata can for instance be shared, downloaded, copied and indexed by search engines or metadata aggregators. Collection curators decide which assets can be made publicly available, if the following conditions are met:

Digital assets have a minimum set of required metadata as detailed in the DAMS documentation
Digital assets and their metadata are intended and suitable for public access, given copyright status, privacy rules and other applicable standards and regulations
To the extent UT Libraries or a DAMS user has a copyright interest in the metadata of a digital asset, and to the extent possible under law, the metadata is dedicated to the public domain

Digital Assets and metadata that have been made publicly available through the Collections portal will receive a URI that will remain resolvable over time. If assets and/or metadata are made programmatically accessible through an API, the API endpoint will remain in operation as long as technologically and operationally feasible. Changes to an API will be publicly announced with reasonable prior notice.

UT Libraries Digital Stewardship will provide long term preservation of those assets ingested into the DAMS and submitted for preservation bagging. Refer to the DAMS Technical Documentation for information about backup and restore procedures in place to safeguard the DAMS itself.

V. User roles, expectations, & permissions

Use of the DAMS is restricted to University of Texas Libraries staff. User roles, affiliated general expectations, and permissions descriptions are as follows:

A. View Only

Individuals in this role can search for and view assets in the DAMS, including metadata details and content in viewers/players, for their respective collections. They cannot download any content from the DAMS and must contact Collection Owners or Supervisors for access and other needs.

B. Collection Contributor

Individuals in this role ingest new and edit existing DAMS assets one at a time through the web interface. Collection Contributors do not manage collections of assets. While they can submit help tickets as needed, they do not serve as the primary point of communication with DAMS Managers for resolution of extensive issues.

C. Collection Owner

Individuals in this role have intellectual and administrative management responsibility and authority for assets stored in individual DAMS collections. Over time, many different individuals will serve in this role for any DAMS collection. Individuals assigned this role ensure sound stewardship of the collection and appropriate management of its assets continues during and beyond their tenure in the role. This role is responsible for the following tasks:

Selecting and ingesting content in line with the selection criteria established by this policy, for instance determining the extent to which analog assets are digitized and represented in digital form
Ensuring that each asset in their care has complete and current metadata according to the UT Libraries DAMS Metadata Guidelines for descriptive and administrative metadata, publicly available in the DAMS documentation
Making rights determinations, including defining metadata values for use and reproduction, as well as restrictions on access in adherence to US copyright law
Determining the extent to which content has the potential to be distressing to viewers, including library staff, adding advisory notes and/or applying access restrictions to collections/assets as appropriate
Ensuring discovery and access, including deciding to make assets or their metadata publicly available as appropriate and mediating patron access to assets as needed
Purging content as necessary

D. Collection Supervisor

Individuals in this role have the same responsibilities as Collection Owners. Beyond that, they serve as point person for a collection, carrying out the following additional tasks:

Approving user roles and permissions for individuals working with the collection's assets
Responding to rights questions and takedown notices
Supporting preservation, including contacting Digital Stewardship staff to coordinate bagging assets out of the DAMS to vault to tape for long term storage
Serving as the primary point of communication with DAMS Managers for resolution of issues with the system

E. DAMS Manager

Individuals in this role manage user accounts, assigning user roles and access permissions based on functional needs to view, edit, ingest, download, or otherwise manage assets within the DAMS. DAMS Managers respond to and manage help tickets, troubleshoot issues, train users, liaise with DAMS Administrators on overall system management, and monitor asset status system-wide via routine reports. DAMS Managers do not manage assets but may occasionally assist collection curators with certain management tasks like batch updates and purges.

F. DAMS Administrator

Libraries IT staff in this role adjust system configurations and deploy code customizations as needed, as well as investigate and resolve issues reported by users. DAMS administrators do not manage assets or users.

VI. Organizational responsibility

Multiple units at UT Libraries coordinate to provide administrative oversight and user services for the DAMS. Access Systems, Digital Stewardship, Content Management, and Libraries IT staff collaboratively maintain DAMS policies and develop user training. The unique support roles of each unit are:

Access Systems staff provide administrative oversight for the DAMS operations and development. This includes coordination between stakeholders and service units, user account management and training, management of user-facing documentation. They liaise directly with Libraries IT staff to manage system configurations, code customizations, and issue resolution.
Content Management staff provide metadata consultations, which may include analysis of existing descriptive metadata and original metadata design.
Digital Stewardship staff provide digitization, batch ingest, and preservation services for DAMS users, including the generation of preservation bags, as well as coordinate initial intake and consultation.
Libraries' IT staff develop and deploy the DAMS software components, provide software maintenance, and technical support for the DAMS.

Access Systems, Content Management, and Digital Stewardship provide digitization project support as staff resources permit, in accordance with UT Libraries' organization-wide development goals and priorities.

VII. Review cycle

Staff providing administrative oversight and user services for the DAMS (as defined in section VI) will review and update this policy as needed, with a full review every two years to assure timely revisions as technology evolves, collection focus changes, and digital library collections mature.

VIII. Dates

Approved: 09/05/2019
Revised: xx/xx/xx

Footnotes

Appendix: UT Libraries Repositories

UT Libraries manages several other repositories, some in cooperation with campus partners. Each repository is designed for certain types of content and users. As an overarching guideline, the DAMS should not include any collection or asset that is deemed exclusively better suited for another UT Libraries repository. The following list contains those repositories managed by UT Libraries that would allow the addition of digital content created by UT Libraries staff.

Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America

https://ailla.utexas.org/

Mission and purpose: Preserve and provide access to recordings in indigenous languages of Latin America, to support the survival of languages and foster a community of speakers and scholars.
Provider: Joint effort of LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, Department of Linguistics, and UT Libraries
Content: Recordings, texts, and other multimedia materials in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America.
Customers: Indigenous Peoples, researchers, and other friends of these languages

Fine Arts Library Visual Resources Collection

Mission and purpose: Provide a growing number of high-resolution images with searchable, accurate metadata for use in classes and research, and ensure that the Collection will be available for future scholars' endeavors.
Provider: Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS) & UT Libraries
Content: Two important collections of images of art, architecture and design: an archival collection of some 550,000 slides, now housed at the Collections Deposit Library on the south side of campus, and a collection of over 90,000 digital images that are available for viewing by all UT Austin faculty, students and staff via Digital Archive Services (DASE), one of the University's digital repository sites. Visual Resources Collection (VRC) staff also oversee uploading digital images of objects from the Blanton Museum and from other Collections here at the University such as the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Art, the Art and Art History Collection, the Landmarks works of sculpture, as well as art works by UT's own Art Faculty, into DASE.
Customers: UT faculty, students, art collection curators

Texas Data Repository

https://data.tdl.org/

Mission and purpose: Publish and archive datasets (and other data products) created by faculty, staff, and students at Texas higher education institutions. Texas ScholarWorks (TSW; see description below) and Texas Data Repository (TDR) are intended to be complementary; data in TDR and associated publications in TSW can be linked together.
Provider: UT Libraries and Texas Digital Library
Content: A wide variety of data and related electronic materials, including spreadsheets, sensor and instrument data, surveys, GIS data, and imagery, along with associated material such as codebooks or data dictionaries
Customers: Faculty, staff, researchers, and students at Texas higher education institutions

Texas GeoData Portal

https://geodata.lib.utexas.edu/

Mission and purpose: Consolidate all of the metadata for geospatial resources (both physical and digital) in the UT Libraries' collections into an index that is searchable with the GeoBlacklight web interface so that campus users can easily find and access these resources.
Provider: UT Libraries
Content: Metadata for geospatial resources (both physical and digital) in the UT Libraries' collections
Customers: UT faculty, staff, and students

Texas ScholarWorks

https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/

Mission and purpose: Provide open, online access to the products of UT research and scholarship, preserve these works for future generations, to promote new models of scholarly communication, and deepen community understanding of the value of higher education. TSW also holds materials that reflect the intellectual and service environment of our campus community.
Provider: UT Libraries and Texas Digital Library
Content: UT ETDs; UT faculty/researcher works (pre-print and post-print articles, published articles, technical reports, white papers, presentations, conference posters, field notes, etc.); student works (research projects, journals, and papers produced by UT students); conference proceedings and journals; and other content determined by the department/research unit submitting the content
Customers: UT faculty, researchers, staff, and students (including student groups, departments, institutes, etc.)