We use CDM at Ball State University (collections at
http://libx.bsu.edu/). I'm not the sysadmin for it, but I can offer my
opinions from where I do interact with it.

I do a lot of work with the CDM Aquisition Station, the program that
lets you add/edit items in the collection. To put it simply, I have a
sense of dread every time I open the program. The UI is often
counterintuitive, going against UI conventions I'm used to. Unless
you're using it to load a small number of simple images short
descriptions, you're going to start running into walls where the
documentation doesn't line up with what you actually do, where error
messages tell you the wrong thing (not just unhelpful, but wrong),
where undocumented limits keep you from doing what you need to do. And
may you never have to edit anything once you've loaded it into the
system. Adjusting a couple of fields of a couple of records is easy
enough, but you can't do bulk edits, nor can you replace the image (or
other sort of file) once you've loaded the record (you have to delete
the record and load a new item; there go your persistent URLs).

I don't know much about the server side of things, but from what I've
learned talking with our sysadmin, it has it's pluses and minuses. On
the plus side, much of the code is PHP that you can edit to make you
web interface behave how you want it to. That allows for a great deal
of customization. But, the PHP also calls some binaries that you
cannot modify, wherein many of the customizations/bug fixes you want
to make must be done. Any customizations you make also require a great
deal of care whenever you upgrade, as you apply all of your changes,
one by one, to the new code. It's usually a several week process to
upgrade to a new version here, so we skip versions whenever we can get
away with it.

My opinion: avoid CDM if you want to do anything at all interesting
with your collection. Use it if you like the out-of-the-box
configuration and just want to post a few pictures on the web using
something OCLC sells.

Have a nice day,
Jonathan


On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 12:12 PM, Harish Maringanti <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've heard of Contentdm from OCLC that many institutions are using to manage
> their digital collections. If you are using Contentdm would you mind sharing
> some of the pros & cons of using it (either to the group or off the list).
>
> Are there any other viable products either commercial or open source that
> can be considered to manage digital collections. Particularly in the open
> source domain are there any good applications to manage image collections?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Harish
>
>
> Harish Maringanti
> Systems Analyst
> K-State Libraries
> (785)532-3261
>



-- 
Jonathan M. Brinley

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