Resource management

Documents archive

Stone and clay tablets had been used as containers of worthy documents and information by ancient people. But today, millions of news, photos, and films are produced and transmitted all over the world, every moment. In the age of information and communication that the world has become like a village, data and information are being considered as valuable assets.

Nowadays, in most organizations and enterprises, some center or office is formed to archive the files, correspondences, and information classification, and it is used to computerize administrative works. But an archive of audio-visual objects is totally away from its classical form. Today, having a digital archive is necessary for every organization, government institution, office, company, and even families and residential buildings.

Media sources

If a suitable plan is not considered for keeping and managing the media files, there will be numerous difficulties to access a wished object within large amounts of information. In an archive application, when a movie, photo, text, or sound is opened, the system automatically shows some information that will be useful besides the information that users insert. The more detailed and complete information for each content, the richer archive and more efficient access to resources will be obtained.

The applications designed and implemented as media archives include complete descriptive and administrative metadata for categorizing and review, which remarkably enhances the archive efficiency. In recent years, different digital-based solutions are developed and considering their advantages and disadvantages, users can achieve the proper solution to meet their needs.

Storage management

Regarding the requirements of a documentation center, how the archive is used, and how often it is referred to, an appropriate solution should be offered. Among different currently available storages to keep archived materials and information in, users can select any storage from a usual computer hard disk to high-capacity standalone storages with a capacity of tens of Terabytes able to keep thousands of hours of videos or use centralized SAN, NAS, and DAS mass storages or digital magnetic tapes.

It is possible to considerably reduce the costs without any decrease in system efficiency by using some management facilities the resources transfer regarding the organization policies, and not keeping all the resources in some expensive fast storages. A hierarchical storage management system performs the automatic task of transferring resources between different storage levels. Thus, handling automatic libraries of digital magnetic tapes and employing distributed storages have become more important.

Workflow

In media management systems, storing the resources and accessing them follows a workflow based on concerned policies. It is possible to define and run a workflow for archive resources; hence as soon as resources are inserted into the system, the process starts; resources will be utilized based on the defined steps. Steps and their relations and involved processes in each stage are all definable according to the organization’s demanded pattern.

Creating an occasional calendar for automatic retrieval of archived objects in some special times, the simultaneous access to the archive for many users, and access level defining are some advanced features of a digital media archive system that facilitates large-scale content management.