Media Manager for Groups Simplifies Digital Organizing, Storing, and Sharing

Posted: May 20, 2008

By Sally Hritz

The College of Arts and Sciences has rolled out Media Manager for Groups, an enhancement of the service that originated in 2006 for individual accounts. Any self-defined group on campus can establish an account, whether from a college, department, project team, committee, or research collaboration.

What is it? “Media Manager for Groups is an application, an instructional technology resource that a group can use to store, organize, and share large collections of digital media files,” says Allen Coleman, digital media library developer in the college’s technology services office. Digital files can include images, documents, data sets, research files, video and audio clips, 3D animations, and much more.

Home-grown. Both the original Media Manager (MM) and now Media Manager for Groups (MMG), offer web-based tools that were created here at Ohio State in the College of Arts and Sciences under the leadership of Diane Dagefeorde, director of technology. The team includes George Abraham, the senior systems developer, Coleman, and several members of the technology services staff.

Planning needed. All of the original Media Manager tools are available in MMG, plus much more. Both individuals and groups must set up an account. But while MM is fairly easy to use and requires only a brief orientation to get started, MMG is far more flexible, so the team works with groups to help build a customized, branded site.

Nitty-gritty. “Using our tools, each group can customize the interface design, database structure, and account management to suit its own needs,” says Coleman. “We meet with the group several times and get into the nitty-gritty together. Different groups have completely different approaches and we support that.”

Fifty to start. The developers help the groups define their goals and work out database structure and design issues. They start each group with 50 gigabytes and charge a fee to cover storage space, backup and recovery, and ongoing consultation and support.

Choice is yours. Coleman says that a group exercises complete control of its site. “They create the metadata fields, choose the kind of data that goes into the fields, and decide which fields can be sorted and searched. Then they can decide how it looks and feels by customizing the interface with their own color scheme, layout, and design.”

Public  and private. Groups can also control what everyone sees, maintaining collections for the world and/or restricting access to other collections. An instructor, for instance, may want to upload materials intended only for students in a class, or a professor can store research documents that are completely private.

Join the five. Currently five groups have created collections using MMG. “Look at the sites already there and see how different they are,” Coleman urges. “The Vet Med site is there for teaching and for marketing and communications, while the Cartoon Image Database is more like a library catalog. The Csuri Project staff took a unique approach. They used the MM engine to organize, display, and associate data with items in the collection, but they are the experts at design and it is completely their own.” The Byrd Polar Research Center and the Treasury of Fine Art round out the first five. All of them allow public access to many of their collections.

Groups interested in setting up a site can begin by clicking the "Contact Us" tab on the Media Manager home page.