Managing a large archive

[aaronw]

Hello all,

Just signed up but have been reading a while. I've searched for this question but came up short, so here goes:

I'm not a photographer at all but I work in IT for an organization with a fairly extensive historical archive of photos. Many of the photos are negative scans, scans of historical documents, and other high res scans in TIFF format at 30-50 MB each. There are a little over 140,000 images in the archive currently, totaling about 2.3 TB (terabytes).

There are two full time curators and one historical expert. Currently the curators edit a single copy and that gets manually synced to the experts machine. That expert then reviews and provides feedback to the curators who make edits. The expert is quite a bit older so is not comfortable making the majority of the edits himself (thus the feedback loop to the curators).

I'm inheriting the archive in the sense that I was not here when it was created. When I arrived all 2 TB were stored on a single external hard drive and backed up by manually copying to another external hard drive. I've since moved it to a Drobo Pro FS (8 bay) with 2 disk redundancy, which is automatically synced to our corporate NAS and backed up to tape nightly. The archive is basically a flat filesystem managed through Adobe Bridge.

The new problem: The expert has now requested to have editor access to the archive. The expert is more or less my boss, so I'm not in a position to say 'No' outright. The expert also wishes to have have remote access. So now we have 3 points of edits (2 curators, expert office and expert home) instead of 1 as we do today.

Being a flat filesystem there is no content management at all. With the archive being a single copy now, we haven't really needed it before. Now we do, and I have no idea where to look. Due to the nature of this content (personal) I'm not permitted to use a hosted solution. Not that getting 2 TB into the cloud would be all that appealing anyway.

I've also considering just moving the Master copy to a secured fileserver outside the corporate firewall and allowing all 3 people to make edits directly there, regardless of location. This seems to be the most technically simple, but also puts the data at a degree of risk, and still doesn't prevent the editors from stomping on changes made by another editors.

I'm not looking for a solution to be handed to me, but a few software packages to go investigate would be fantastic!

Thank you all for any help that can be provided,

-A

 

[spacefuzz]

I dont know about handling change reviews etc but lightroom could be useful as a catalogue to keyword, sort, and review the files.

 

[GrantH]

DATE
-Selects
--Masters
---Ouputs

 

[Mully]

You might want to back up these files to 2 HD's and give the boss access to one and keep the other one clean just for backups ....that way if he screws up you always have a fresh copy.HD

 

[Whiskey]

The only thing I have to add, is turn on the "Previous versions" functionality of Server 2008 R2 so that way when entire folders end up getting deleted you can easily restore without having to go back to tapes. It takes a little disk space, but is well worth it as it saves me time on shared drives regularly.

Whiskey

 

[KmH]

Unfortunately, the first solution that comes to mind, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, can only be accessed by 1 computer at a time eliminating it from consideration.

Consequently you likely need an enterprise grade image database management application like Media Pro photo management software

 

[The_Traveler]

Do you have a budget for this?

There are larger image management systems that will serve you well.
I have sent an inquiry to a friend who will return a name or two in a day or two.

 

[aaronw]

Do you have a budget for this?

Thank you all for the feedback. I'll start investigating the options above.

We are pretty well funded as a company so yes, I have access to funds. It is a 'make a recommendation and cost it and we'll consider it' type of project.

 

[DBA]

The expert also wishes to have have remote access........I've also considering just moving the Master copy to a secured fileserver outside the corporate firewall and allowing all 3 people to make edits directly there, regardless of location. This seems to be the most technically simple, but also puts the data at a degree of risk, and still doesn't prevent the editors from stomping on changes made by another editors.

One suggestion would be to setup a VPN to the expert's home. Will provide better security compared to a fileserver. Draw back is that you'll need static IP's at your main office and also the experts home (if you don't already). This is how we have our remote offices and the owners homes setup for remote access.

 

[aaronw]

The expert also wishes to have have remote access........I've also considering just moving the Master copy to a secured fileserver outside the corporate firewall and allowing all 3 people to make edits directly there, regardless of location. This seems to be the most technically simple, but also puts the data at a degree of risk, and still doesn't prevent the editors from stomping on changes made by another editors.

One suggestion would be to setup a VPN to the expert's home. Will provide better security compared to a fileserver. Draw back is that you'll need static IP's at your main office and also the experts home (if you don't already). This is how we have our remote offices and the owners homes setup for remote access.

Yeah all of the IT part is no problem. That's the part I'm good at The part I need help with is the content revision control.

So far I think I have three options:

A single master copy of the archive on an accessible share (protected by VPN, etc):
Pros: No content revision is necessary.
Cons: Remote connections, even local connections will be somewhat slow as all images are 30-50 MB must be loaded over the network or internet. This archive has no thumbnails, only full res photos. This will be difficult to work with, at best.

Multiple remote copies:
Pros: Very fast access to the archive.
No VPN necessary.

Cons: Requires some version control (if both expert and curators changed the same photo, changes need to be merged or at least flagged not overwritten)

A photo/archive enterprise software solution:
(For example a web based solution running on a local server that maintains thumbnails, descriptions and changes internally)
Pros: Allows quick and easy access from any location (via VPN).

Cons: More services to maintain.
New software for curators and expert to learn to use.
Probably expensive.


Am I missing any other options that might work? In the 3 above there is no clear winner mostly because I don't know what software packages to look at for the last option.

 

[The_Traveler]

My friend has replied with the following:''

The cataloguing software which is probably the most popular is "Cumulus" from Canto.

Their Single User (as opposed to the Enterprise version ) costs $399 and should be all that you need.

This version seems to being distributed by DataBasics rather than by Canto themselves who seem to handle only the Enterprise versions these days.

DataBasics | Canto Cumulus Single User for digital asset and photo library management software on your desktop

On-line purchases:
DataBasics | Canto Cumulus Single User Online Shop

Hope this helps,

 

[aaronw]

My friend has replied with the following:''

The cataloguing software which is probably the most popular is "Cumulus" from Canto.

Their Single User (as opposed to the Enterprise version ) costs $399 and should be all that you need.

This version seems to being distributed by DataBasics rather than by Canto themselves who seem to handle only the Enterprise versions these days.

DataBasics | Canto Cumulus Single User for digital asset and photo library management software on your desktop

On-line purchases:
DataBasics | Canto Cumulus Single User Online Shop

Hope this helps,

This looks awesome! Thank you. I'll start researching this further but it looks like a great head start. Thanks again!