King's College London

Web applications for King’s

King’s College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (Times Higher 2007) and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, King’s has 19,300 students from more than 130 countries, and 5,000 employees. King’s has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. The College is in the top group of UK universities for research earnings and has an annual income of approximately £400 million. King’s College London licensed GlobusMedia’s digital asset management system Brandworkz® to help with the management of the digital assets of three of the College’s departments: Archives and Corporate Records Services, the Foyle Special Collections Library and the External Relations Directorate, including the Corporate Design Unit. They also licensed the web content management system Contentworkz® to bring these assets onto their public website through content managed templates.

In control with Brandworkz Each department had different needs when it came to making their assets available, each requiring its own distinct system. With GlobusMedia’s Brandworkz, these digital asset management systems have been tailored to precisely meet those needs, while also allowing the department to set sophisticated access permissions for their various user groups. Following the digitisation of material from their collections, the Foyle Special Collections Library had built up an extensive catalogue of very high resolution digital images in various formats, and required a solution for outside parties to access these materials on the web. case study

“We examined several different products but, for its robustness, flexibility, configurability and, not least, value for money, Brandworkz was the unanimous choice,” said Hugh Cahill, Foyle Special Collections Library. “We are often asked to provide images to scholars and students, as well as to publishers, film and television companies and private individuals. The acquisition of Brandworkz makes this process much easier, allowing us to keep track of our digital assets and to retrieve them quickly and easily.”

Saving time Noting that Imperial College London, Middlesex University and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Partnership (MLA) are also users of Brandworkz in the management of their digital assets, the Foyle Special Collections Library realised the appeal of the system to store, organise and catalogue multiple images and their metadata, with the ability to carry out metadata and full-text searches to find documents and images in seconds. Maintaining full control of exactly how and in which format the images can be downloaded was also an important consideration for the Special Collections Library. “Resolution, quality, file format and whether the image is watermarked or not is all controlled by us,” Hugh Cahill said. “The selected images can then be downloaded directly by the customer, saving both time and the need for us to send CDs through the post.”

Meet your needs The Archives and Corporate Records Services at King’s uses Brandworkz for the storage and meta-tagging of digital items from the College’s historically significant archival collections, including photographs, drawings, posters, letters and books. Brandworkz is also used by the College’s Communications Office and in-house Corporate Design Unit to manage access to the College’s brand assets and image library, demonstrating the system’s versatility by using it to supply brand assets such as logos, templates, images and presentations to College staff and external audiences. Archive and corporate records Special Collections library

Contentworkz: Committed to committees

Committees play a key role in policy forming and decision making in many organisations across the public and private sectors. Committee records (agendas, minutes and papers) capture vital corporate information and support public accountability. Using GlobusMedia’s public-facing Contentworkz content management system (CMS), the King’s College London Committee Zone website interacts with the digital asset management features of Brandworkz to allow both committee members and guest users easy-access to agendas, notes and papers from King’s numerous committee meetings, while securely managing these documents in accordance with the policies and procedures of the College. The Committee Zone enables King’s College London to combine the Contentworkz and Brandworkz technologies in managing, circulating and publishing committee records, whilst ensuring compliance with their statutory duties of disclosure and transparency of decision making. Microsites for each separate committee are automatically generated, where public users can search for and view documents. Committee Zone administrators are also able to log-in to ensure that sensitive documents are accessible for private viewing only by registered users with the appropriate permissions.

Google mapping the King’s campuses

GlobusMedia was commissioned by the College to develop Contentworkz templates that integrate with Google Maps, creating a mashup of cutting edge online mapping technology and information about the various College campuses, buildings and features, replacing an older generation of static graphic maps. Visitors will now be able to interact with maps to zoom, pan and see precise graphical building-outlines on top of the tried-and-tested Google Maps system, as well as search for building names and details. Users will also arrive at the correct location thanks to the system’s integration with the established Transport for London Journey Planner.

Making an exhibition King’s College London’s latest use of the Contentworkz system is to enable the creation of microsites for online exhibitions, as well as other ad-hoc public-facing projects. One of the first of these projects is a new exhibition about the discovery of the structure of DNA, historic work that took place at the College. Administrators can create exhibition microsites that use managed elements such as image galleries, timelines and on-screen page-turning of books and manuscripts, while adhering to the College’s corporate visual identity for web content.