Moving from Chaos to Creativity with Five Million Objects
Explore how The Cleveland Museum of Natural History leverages DAM to enhance accessibility, streamline curation processes, and bring its rich collection to life.
All Images © Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Key Figures & Objectives
5M
Objects
13
Separate Collections
10K
Uploads in a Week
Organisation
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Headquarters
Ohio, USA
Director of Digital Media
Chris Gelles
Digital Asset Manager
Hailey Majewski
Background
For over 100 years, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History has been recognized as one of North America's finest natural history museums. It’s the largest museum in Ohio dedicated to the natural sciences, hosting more than 375,000 visitors and 13,000 member households annually.
The museum’s collections include approximately five million specimens, while its Natural Areas Program protects more than 12,000 acres of natural habitat in Northeast Ohio. These habitats represent the remarkable biological diversity that was once widespread throughout the region, and now serve as educational and scientific resources.
On-staff curators conduct research in 11 scientific disciplines, including biological and cultural anthropology, archaeology, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, botany, paleobotany, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology and publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals. Their work has local and global significance, enriching the museum’s educational programs and advancing its mission.
That’s a lot of assets to collect, but Digital Asset Manager Hailey Majewski is more than up to the challenge.
The Goal
When Hailey started, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History had no standard storage policy – assets were spread out amongst a series of internal and external drives, servers, and Sharepoint, meaning anytime a user wanted to find a specific asset, they had to know where it was first.
The servers that held data were disorganized, and no system was in place to prevent duplicate assets. Security and backups were limited, along with file integrity checks for preservation.
Hailey wanted to bring order to that digital chaos. She set out to simplify the system by establishing a single unified platform. Hailey’s plan was to “migrate all collections into a single location, with the same data standards, with the goal of sharing our data.” To do that, Hailey realized the museum needed a Digital Asset Management system that could be configured to fit their unique requirements.
The Challenge
Not just any DAM would do. Regarding the museum’s assets, security and access control were big concerns. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is home to various sensitive artifacts, including human remains, medical records, and medical scans. Hailey said, “We needed to make sure that sensitive information was only available to people who should have access to them.”
Permissioning was a critical element of the search for a Digital Asset Management system. Not only were there sensitive materials, with 13 separate collections, but the museum wanted a system that would allow them to create groups with individual permissions to ensure everyone only saw what they needed. And all of those 13 groups would need different metadata and permissions on who could see or edit the metadata.
Not every system could give them the detailed permissions they needed; fewer still had experience with natural history institutions like the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. After months of searching, Hailey and her team selected Terentia as their new DAM system.
“Terentia emerged as the ideal solution for our needs, offering a seamless blend of customization, a user-friendly interface, and effortless navigation through the diverse security requirements of our collections. It's not only a fit; it's exactly what we were looking for.”
Hailey Majewski
Digital Asset Manager
The Solution
Once the museum selected Terentia, they were able to move quickly, implementing most of the major elements of their DAM in about a year, including:
Powerful Permissions
With Terentia, the museum created a huge variety of user groups, allowing them to develop granular permissions. In addition, they could assign permissions down to the user level so that highly sensitive assets could be viewed by a small subset or even just an individual user. This allowed the museum to meet its goal of protecting sensitive materials while still keeping all of its assets in a central location.
Tracking Objects
While digital collections exist, a significant part of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s collection includes physical objects. For example, Terentia is configured to hold the digital representation of the Education Department’s objects and track their physical location in the museum.
Dedicated Environment
Due to the nature of the collection, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History initially considered a traditional on-premise deployed solution but realized this older technology would fall short of their needs. Terentia provides modern infrastructure as a cloud-native solution on Azure - either hosted by Terentia or self-hosted by the community member. The museum and each of Terentia’s other community members are provided with their own isolated instance software, ensuring their data and assets are not shared with other community members. This offers enhanced data security, privacy, and sovereignty.
Unique Metadata
With 13 different collections, the museum’s metadata couldn’t be one-size-fits-all. Instead, the organization has set up distinct metadata fields for each collection and has developed a unique metadata schema so that tags are specific to a given discipline.
Partnership Built On Trust
The museum's digital media department has developed a strong relationship with Terentia. They can come to the vendor with requests and see their requests not just being added to a list, but being put through to development. Terentia’s strong support and regular contact with the museum ensures they have the support they need to keep their DAM running smoothly and increase its use daily throughout the organization.
“When I was recruited at the museum, I initially had a different system in mind, but witnessing the unparalleled value that Terentia brings was a game-changer. It wasn't just about meeting the needs of one department; Terentia proved to be a transformative asset, elevating efficiency and collaboration across multiple departments.”
Chris Gelles
Director of Digital Media
The Results
With a flexible Digital Asset Management system centralizing its assets, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History has seen more and more teams finding creative ways to use their system.
The Biological Anthropology department can connect CT Scans and other medical records to human remains in their collection, giving them a way to enrich their assets with data. At the same time, strict permissions ensure that those remains are kept confidential and not exposed to the general public or even more than just a handful of the museum’s staff.
The Education Department now relies on Terentia to keep track of their assets for their programs. Using Terentia's Lightbox feature, teams can organize groups of physical objects and digital assets based on presentation topics. Users can see what materials can be used, whether they are available, and where the physical objects are located.
The Marketing team has also learned how helpful their DAM can be. When the museum opened its new Visitor Hall, Marketing was able to collect content for the media in easy-to-access Lightboxes. The Media could find pre-approved graphics and photographs related to the Visitor Hall without anyone on the Marketing team having to email out content or set up Dropbox folders. Instead, reporters logged in and grabbed the content they were allowed to access, saving Marketing time and ensuring all the content that went out was Marketing approved.
And this is just the beginning. Hailey, the Education, Collections, and Digital Media teams have many ways to improve and expand their DAM use, including the appropriate compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). With Terentia working alongside them, there is high confidence they’ll be able to put this and their future plans into action.
Learn More
Cleveland Museum of Natural History discusses Aligning their Digital & Physical Transformation at DAM and Museums 2024
Click to Watch
Key Takeaways
Granular Permissions
Have a granular permissions system that can handle all your use cases.
Easily Share Assets
A DAM can help you connect with media and the public.
Supplier Engagement
Choose a DAM vendor that will consider your needs and priorities in their roadmap.
Connect with Our DAM Experts
Contact us today for a personalized consultation to discover how Terentia's intuitive interface and advanced search capabilities can streamline your workflow and enhance your digital asset management strategy. Get in touch to start a conversation.
Reach out at info@terentia.io or terentia.io/demo today