Making cultural heritage documentation publicly available with DAM
27. June 2023
About the NDCH
Referred to as “Riksantikvaren” in Norwegian, the NDCH was first established in 1912 and is responsible for managing cultural heritage, environments, and landscapes of historical importance. Amongst its areas of administrative responsibilities, you’ll find medieval towns, historical monuments & buildings, old churches, and much more. They are also responsible for storing and managing over a million digital assets associated with such sites, actively working on ensuring the preservation and documentation of cultural heritage across the country.
In order to properly preserve places and artifacts, the NDCH keeps visual records of thousands of buildings, towns, monuments, and other cultural sites, which they store in an asset library powered by the Fotoware DAM solution. Their digital collections include anything from standard forms of documentation to highly detailed visual assets.
— Our goal is always to have images, drawings, and other visual assets available for our users and stakeholders. These are people working with cultural heritage, for example, public servants and people responsible for churches, museums, or archeological artifacts and areas. Furthermore, we also want to make certain assets available to the public.
Making images available to the public
To spread awareness of Norwegian cultural heritage sites and documentation, the NDCH has made selected digital assets available to the public through their site kulturminnebilder.no. The site is hosted in Fotoware and features images and other visual documentation showcasing the nation’s cultural heritage. You may, for instance, look at how specific cities have changed over the past century or study the interior of famous ships, churches, and the like.
Additionally, the NDCH has used the Fotoware open API to streamline the process of publishing images on other web pages. Using metadata for image management also ensures that the shared assets are relevant and approved for this purpose.
DAM for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs)
With the Fotoware DAM solution, the NDCH has the opportunity to store and manage all assets from one central system. This way, they can easily find, sort, share, and publish visuals, ensuring complete control of every asset and enabling those of public relevance to be visible to private individuals as well.
It’s common for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) to store and manage massive asset libraries, often exceeding a million individual files. Such assets are often of public interest and may sometimes be treated as historical artifacts or documentation.
Therefore, proper archiving is key within this industry, and many GLAMs resort to DAM solutions for efficient asset management. If you want to learn more about this topic, you can check out this article and discover seven ways a DAM helps organizations of this kind increase productivity.
