We use MerlinOne and our foundation uses Extensis for what sounds like a
similar purpose. We reviewed a number of other options in the past, but my
knowledge is too stale to be useful.

A few thoughts:

1) The most important thing for the researcher to envision how she hope she
and others will interact with the system as clearly as possible -- this
ultimately determines what will and won't work for her.  When it comes to
technology, the word "support" is almost meaningless, and the definitions
of all the things it sounds like she needs vary greatly from one product to
the next.

2) Metadata is always the Achilles heel. All the products we reviewed
nominally support batch metadata assignment/modification via multiple
mechanisms. Aside that technology cannot make distinctions that humans
didn't have time to deal with earlier, what passes for "sophisticated" in
terms of assignment/maintenance is in the eye of the beholder.

3) People tend to think of systems as solutions, but they are just tools.
No matter what route she pursues, a significant investment of time will be
necessary to learn and exploit the capabilities of the system to achieve
the effect she needs.

kyle




On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 7:20 AM Jordan Hale <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> A researcher contacted my colleagues seeking advice in locating a software
> package that would provide archival management, metadata creation,
> indexing, and annotation functionality for a digitized collection of
> several thousand textual and photographic documents, with multi-user access
> and authentication controls. We aren't aware of an all-in-one solution, as
> our internal workflows involve Islandora, AtoM and more. Does anyone have
> any insight into proprietary solutions so we can offer her some suggestions?
>
> Many thanks,
> Jordan
>
> Jordan Hale (they/them/theirs)
> Digital Repositories Librarian, University of Waterloo Library<
> http://uwaterloo.ca/library>
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> / 519 888 4567
> x40135
>