An overflow of illustrative riches was causing headaches for Oxford University Press, one of Australia's oldest book publishers with a staff of approximately 120 based in Melbourne.

A wide range of its textbooks are authored locally for the education market, and OUP faced a problem managing the large number of original illustrations and images required for these titles.

The headache is over with the implementation of Cumulus, a sophisticated digital asset management (DAM) platform from Germany's Canto, supplied by local reseller Databasics.

The process of searching for a DAM platform began three years ago when OUP System Administrator Jason Cutler began looking for solutions. Before the DAM was implemented all images and illustrations were stored offline in a file and folder structure and were only able to be found by navigating hierarchies or searching by file name.

A strict policy to ensure metadata is added when images are imported into the DAM means they are now able to be searched in tags such as book title, ISBN Number, author and subject.

"Cumulus is like a folder buster," said Cutler.

"You don't have to worry about where content lives for Cumulus to accomplish tasks. It breaks through the traditional structure, although you can still keep images in traditional folders to provide the conventional way of browsing."

"The search results are lightning fast and it makes all the work to tag images well worth it. If people miss adding keywords then its very easy to find out by searching on blank fields and filling in the details later. Also, because the admin is server based, I can provide features to all users simultaneously. Because it is cross-platform, it simplifies training needs- Mac and Windows users all learn the same procedure consistently.”

OUP is currently completing the rollout of Cumulus 7, and on the horizon is an update to the latest release, version 8.

One of the major attractions of this upgrade is the potential for image markup and manipulation available within Cumulus 8. The design workflow at OUP is traditional PDF proofing and markup, however the potential for digital collaboration is exciting with the Cumulus roadmap.