Organize your media with digital asset management software for museums
Digital Asset Management with TMS Media Studio
Take control of your media with TMS Media Studio, a digital asset management software (DAMS) designed for all museum departments—from digital asset managers to conservators, and marketing to collections management departments. Customize rights management, copyright clearance, and photography and media workflows with a DAMS that shares its database with your collections management system (CMS).
Why choose TMS Media Studio?
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Marty Stein | ||
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TMS Media Studio FAQ
Within museums or other institutions that steward collections, digital asset management software (DAMS) enables the preservation and management of digital assets.
Just as a CMS is software for collections data, a DAMS delivers targeted care for digital assets by supporting their cataloguing, creation, storage, retrieval, and protection.
For a museum, implementing a DAMS can improve media workflows, facilitate responsible access to digital assets, and ensure these assets are properly documented, searchable, and safeguarded from loss or improper use.
The creation and use of digital assets is an ongoing challenge for many museums.
New assets are generated often through collections management processes—such as media accompanying new acquisitions, updated photography for collection objects, and imaging from conservation reports.
But these assets are also created and used by many other departments in your institution, including:
- Curatorial
- Exhibitions
- Learning and Interpretation
- Marketing
- Photography and Imaging Services
- Publications
- Special Events
- Website
Within museums, DAMS and CMS functionality often overlaps. However, there are key differences that sets these two systems apart.
A CMS primarily supports the management of collections data, relevant to objects, collections, exhibitions, loans, shipping, insurance, and so forth. On the flip side, a DAMS provides storage and care for digital assets and their related data.
Pairing a DAMS with your CMS can bridge significant gaps in internal operations. Because while a CMS may be able to provide certain functionality for digital assets, it doesn’t deliver the targeted management, security, and features of a DAMS.
TMS Media Studio can’t be used as a stand-alone DAMS. It works exclusively with TMS for Windows and TMS Collections, our web-based collections management system.
Once implemented, these two solutions share a database, allowing for superior functionality while avoiding the pitfalls of 3rd-party DAMS that often require expensive, ongoing integration maintenance.
Without a DAMS to centralize, organize, and make digital content available, your museum is losing time, efficiency, and—ultimately—money.
Implementing the right DAMS will allow you to realize key benefits, including:
- Easy access to digital assets in a central repository of digital assets for all staff and departments, so teams can be more productive
- Better searchability of all digital assets, whether related to—or distinct from—collection objects
- Self-service functionality for users across your institution to find the files, understand rights, and download appropriate image sizes when required
- Improved collaboration and workflows between different departments
- Trackable rights management to reduce the risk of improper use
- Faster copyright clearance workflows
- Same commitment to the responsible acquisition and management of digital assets as physical collections objects
Depending on preference, TMS Media Studio can be securely hosted in the cloud by Gallery Systems or on your institutional servers. Find out more about Gallery Systems Managed Hosting.
However, TMS Media Studio can be deployed locally by a client on their own hardware, rather than the cloud.
For museums and cultural institutions, the best DAMS is one that can seamlessly integrate with your collections management software.
Gallery Systems created TMS Media Studio as part of an ecosystem of museum software that addresses all your institutional needs.
The TMS Suite is centered around TMS Collections and integrates that functionality with applications to support online collections, digital asset management, conservation documentation, barcoding, and collections auditing.
TMS Media Studio isn’t a 3rd-party DAMS—it works seamlessly with TMS for Windows or TMS Collections since the solutions share a database.
When you implement TMS Media Studio, there’s no need to create and maintain a costly, cumbersome integration between your DAMS and your CMS. The two software use a central database, meaning your data is always identical and synced in real time.
By offering this benefit, TMS Media Studio can immediately provide full media management, eliminate unnecessary delays, and accelerate your entire museum’s workflows.
All changes made in TMS Media Studio sync automatically across your TMS Suite of collections management products.
The TMS Suite’s interconnected ecosystem eliminates the lag time of data synchronizations. The management of disruptive middleware layers and integrations are a thing of the past.
Implementing TMS Media Studio is more streamlined and less costly than a third-party digital asset management software.
Since TMS Media Studio uses the same database as TMS for Windows or TMS Collections, you will be able to:
- Eliminate the stress and time-consuming process of mapping your data each time it’s moved from the CMS’s database to the stand-alone DAMS. The existing relational data structures are never removed or altered.
- Keep your records secure and never lose data due to a failed data refresh or synchronization outside of your database.
- The user-friendly interface is easy to learn. The DAMS also leverages the skills your TMS administrators already have. As a result, TMS users are often quick to learn the ins-and-outs of TMS Media Studio during training.
- Activate TMS Media Studio quickly for existing TMS users with all the functionality you expected from a DAMS. Other systems carry a lengthy integration time.
TMS Media Studio is certified for Chrome and Safari browsers on Mac or Windows computers.
Please visit our contact page to get in touch with one of our Account Managers. They will assess your needs and customize a quote for your organization.
Digital asset management resources
A Museum Professional’s Guide to Building DAM Workflows
Using a DAMS throughout the full lifecycle of digital assets
Museum DAM workflows control how well an institution cares for its digital assets. Creating and following internal processes, with a digital asset management system (DAMS), helps to ensure these assets’ preservation, organization, and proper usage. However, museums often face a twofold challenge [...]
Your Guide to TMS Suite Hosting
Is managed hosting or self-hosting the better choice for your institution?
Let’s talk about TMS Suite hosting. Deciding how to host your collections management system (CMS) requires a lot of consideration when you're debating between managed hosting and self-hosting [...]
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