Digital Asset Management System

The UC San Diego Library Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) is a locally developed digital repository designed to store and manage digital assets of UC San Diego.

Technical Architecture

The DAMS is an expression of our XDRE (eXtensible Digital Resource Environment) framework. Components include:

Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model, Solr (an indexing service based on Lucene), JSON (Java Script Object Notation data exchange format), Samba and OpenStack file services, ARKs (Archival Resource Keys, unique identifiers), Java based development platform, Ruby on Rails based display and discovery system using Hydra and Blacklight.

The DAMS' flexible architecture can accept a variety of data formats, schemas and web services when ingesting digital assets. It stores digital content files and allows for the creation, indexing and searching of associated metadata to locate and retrieve the content files. Content can be composed of files in any format, including text, sound, video, and images.

The DAMS is also designed to facilitate the transfer and submission of the Library's digital assets to Chronopolis and the California Digital Library's Merritt, and can easily be extended to serve other purposes. Additionally, the DAMS is able to export data in many formats, including METS, HTML, OAI, RSS, CSV. Future plans include linking data sets with other universities and organizations.

For more information about the DAMS, including the data model and technical diagram, see Github:

• DAMS Manual,
• DAMS Hydra Head,
• DAMS REST API,
• DAMS Ontology

Additional information on Hydra is available at Samvera.

Metadata

Information about the metadata management within the DAMS, such as mappings, standards, requirements, and best practices are available through our Metadata Services Digital Object Metadata Management unit.