Building an Organization-Wide DAM to Unify Operations
Discover how Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium streamlined their assets, enhanced collaboration, and educated the public about ocean conservation with Digital Asset Management.
© Conor Goulding/Mote Marine Laboratory
Key Figures & Objectives
+67%
Staff Utilisation
30
Asset Types
67K
Assets in System
Organisation
Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium
Headquarters
Sarasota, Florida
Library & Archives Director
Jaime Fogel
Senior Manager of Creative Services
Alexis Crabtree
Cataloging an Ocean of Information
For nearly 70 years, the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium has been working to provide research and education related to ocean conservation and sustainable use. The nonprofit includes more than 25 marine research programs and maintains eight separate locations, including a public aquarium that houses over 100 marine species.
Mote provides hospitalization and rehabilitation for injured marine life and offers many educational programs that help inform the community about ocean life, its importance, and how we can work to protect it.
They’re also pioneering research to help combat red tide, developing treatments for coral disease, and working with fisheries to develop more sustainable fishing practices – to name just a few of their many ongoing research projects.
Jaime Fogel, Mote’s Library and Archives Director, and Alexis Crabtree, their Senior Manager of Creative Services, both play a significant role in tracking and sharing information about Mote’s activities. And a few years ago, the two of them realized they had a problem in common.
The Goal
Jaime and Alexis had a wide assortment of assets housed in separate, outdated systems. After talking it over, the pair decided it might be simpler to join forces and find a single Digital Asset Management system that would work for both departments.
But it wasn’t long before the pair realized other departments at Mote might also need a modern DAM.. So, instead of searching for a Digital Asset Management system that would work for just Communications and the Archives, Jaime and Alexis decided to look for one that would work for the whole organization.
Ultimately, they wanted to find a Digital Asset Management system to “unite Mote’s digital assets into a single system, which [would] provide access to Mote materials for both staff and the public.”
With that goal in mind, they started looking for a DAM system to meet their needs.
The Challenge
When they started searching, Mote had no central location for assets, which resulted in assets getting stored in multiple locations or lost entirely. For instance, research papers were “turned in” via emails to one of three people. Then, when it was time to construct an annual report, Mote staff had to hunt down who had shared a paper with whom.
However, the scale of the organization made finding a Digital Asset Management system more complex. Mote has more than 20 departments that Jaime and Alexis wanted to bring into a central system, so they had to hunt down a DAM that could accommodate the needs of all those separate departments. Jaime and Alexis found most solutions on the market too specialized to meet their needs, focusing, for example, on only marketing or archival use cases.
But Mote needed their DAM to be very flexible. The organization didn’t just need a place to manage photographs. Different departments stored research papers, reports, blueprints, event photos, educational curricula, and videos, all of which the organization wanted to manage in the system.
Jaime and Alexis also knew the cost of inaction or maintaining the status quo would mean that they would still need other systems, would have departments operating in silos and have inconsistency and brand disparity throughout the organization.
“Terentia is so configurable that we can have marketing photos, herbarium specimens, blueprints, and technical reports all in one place.”
Jamie Fogel
Library & Archives Director
The Solution
Jaime and Alexis looked into more than a dozen solutions and interviewed stakeholders from 17 departments before choosing Terentia as their DAM. Some deciding factors included:
Unlimited Asset Types and Metadata Fields
With Terentia, Mote has created over 30 asset types ranging from marketing and event images to brand assets, research papers, herbarium scans, blueprints and floorplans of their facilities. “The big thing was the flexibility to put in all of the different item types that we wanted and with metadata specific to each type,” Jaime said.
Ease of Use
Beyond simply setting up various asset types, Mote wanted a tool they could use with low involvement from IT - ideally a hosted solution that did not require heavy professional services or developers to make changes to the DAM. Terentia offered a hosted, easy-to-use, built-in, low-code, drag-and-drop schema manager that allowed DAM managers to adjust layout and asset types without additional help. In addition, the ease of use and intuitive design allowed general staff members to jump in and use Terentia with minimal training.
Multi-site Access
Because Terentia offers access via the cloud, staff from all eight of Mote’s locations can access the assets housed in their DAM, allowing them a range of scientific research and educational resources.
Unlimited Users
With hundreds of potential users and plans to open up their DAM through a portal to their website and at the Aquarium, it was essential for Mote to have a system that would allow unlimited users to encourage adoption. Terentia offered reassurance that as their user base grows, Mote won’t be weighed down by expensive per-seat charges.
Permissions
Only some users at Mote need access to every part of the DAM. With Terentia, Jaime and Alexis could set up permissions that ensured the right people were viewing the right assets and even set the field types that users could view or edit. Further, using the security model in Terentia, Jaime and Alexis could isolate assets by department right down to individual users.
"As a non-profit, we are constantly struggling with the restrictions from per-user costs for the services we use at Mote. When we found out Terentia's cost included unlimited users, it became almost a no-brainer for us!"
Alexis Crabtree
Senior Manager of Creative Services
The Results
Mote finally found its central source of truth in Terentia. Jaime shared, “Our users know more and more that this is where they can find things.”
Mote scientists must now submit their publications to Terentia, ensuring it’s easy to find the latest research. In a few clicks, anyone on the staff can pull any publications in the system, giving users ready access to years of study.
Thanks to Terentia’s open schemas, Mote created encyclopedia records for various species in the Aquarium, with plans to build detailed encyclopedic records for all of their animal residents. These records can then be connected to multiple related digital assets, with the ability to select one as the "preferred asset" representing each entry. That way, Mote staff can see details about an individual animal (say, long-time resident Hang Tough, a blind green sea turtle) and have it linked to an entry about its species.
Soon, Terentia will also feed content into the backend of Mote's website. The animal records published in Terentia will be pulled through to the website along with their affiliated digital assets via an API - ensuring that website visitors will always have access to the latest information. Mote staff bios will also be housed in Terentia so that program managers can update their teams' headshots and biographies directly.
As time passes, more departments are finding ways to use Mote’s DAM. For example, Jaime and Alexis are helping the Education Department store its resources in Terentia. The system can let users know which grade a resource is appropriate for and even include details about state standards and curricula, allowing Mote to continue to fulfill its mission of educating the public.
With help from Terentia, Mote has been able to link up assets from all of their locations and departments under one easy-to-use application. Now, they have a unified system that can expand to meet their needs in the present and in the future.
Key Takeaways
User Configurable
Choose a system that can be customized for all your users.
Permissions
Use permission to create a multi-departmental DAM.
User Friendly
Get an easy-to-use DAM to boost adoption and decrease IT requests.
Connect with Our DAM Experts
Contact us today for a personalized consultation to discover how Terentia's intuitive interface and advanced search capabilities can streamline your workflow and enhance your digital asset management strategy. Get in touch to start a conversation.
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