Managing Multimedia Content Databases: toward a Model for Content Management

The Internet provides an effective means of dissemination of information in the Humanities. In many cases the Internet is becoming the primary or even only form for dissemination of information. In this context, the effective management of published resources becomes essential. Management of multimedia content on the Internet must deal with not only the original Content publishing process but also issues of technological obsolescence, effective reuse of the digital assets, and version control of information. Systems must address the established disciplines of effective description, classification and preservation to be more than just transient sources of information. Many website publishing systems address only the editorial workflow control of publication and separation of content from presentation, oriented to a single runtime engine. This paper presents a model for Content Management System design that incorporates the effective identification, dissemination and re-use content in a heterogonous authoring and runtime environment. Issues of archival management and mitigation of technological obsolescence are