"FotoWare has expanded our potential, broadened our user base, and allowed for the rapid growth of our collection."
In 2016 the WHHA launched their digital library, which contains about 20,000 publically available assets, over 300,000 internally available assets, and about 4,000 registered users who utilize over 60 descriptive metadata fields. The digital library is supported by the FotoWare Digital Asset Management solution and is in part open to the public.
The old system only enabled WHHA staff to upload photos to the public archive. It became difficult to organize the library, and pictures that were not for public-use needed to be stored somewhere else. This made the public archive very static, and difficult to control.
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Keeping the quality consistent across the entire system required a multi-step review process. Previously, this had been done through excel sheets and email correspondence, which was both time-consuming and difficult to keep track of. There was always a risk of losing important notes, or having a review process stopped due to a human error, since images and notes needed to be sent and retrieved from different platforms.
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After implementing FotoWare, the White House Historical Association has been able to have multiple archives. Whereas some archives are for internal use, one is also open to the public, and the configuration of the site makes it possible to scroll through photos by using both taxonomies or a search function. This keeps the public archive alive and easy to navigate within. While the internal archives make it easier to work with files not approved for public use.
The review process is optimized by using a customized workflow. On the front end, this workflow consists of a couple of ‘set review’ actions, which sends the asset(s) to and from the Historian and Librarian team for approval. Lastly, the asset(s) will be sent to the Digital Library team for final approval. In this way, the entire review process is done within the DAM, tracking every step of the way.
By enabling a shopping cart integration within the FotoWare interface, the White House Historical Association can now easily sell images to members of the public. Now, users can easily request size and format for the image and order it in high resolution.
An API that was built in 2019 links the White House Historical Association’s website to its digital library. In this way, everyone gets access to the public archives when clicking on a photo. The API also helps the marketing and communication departments to work more efficiently with their photos, as their DAM is now integrated with their CMS, which enables employees to simply select the pictures they want to use, removing the need for time-consuming uploading and downloading between platforms.
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