Prepress Technology March 2000
Washington Post TEAMS up on DAM
By Ingrid Palmer
Staff Writer
TEAMS, the flagship product of Artesia Technologies, is an open digital asset management framework that allows companies to capture, organize, leverage and dynamically distribute information. Marketed to information-intensive organizations, TEAMS enables newspapers like The Washington Post -- one of its biggest users -- to efficiently archive, manage and publish material including audio, graphics, video and text documents.
According to Charles Olson, systems manager of newsroom technology at The Washington Post, the 1997 installation of TEAMS rectified a growing problem at the newspaper. The Post's old database stored text, photos and graphics in separate archives, making it cumbersome and even costly for journalists to access previously published content.
Additionally, the old database could hold no more than 12 years of information. Also, its search engine was not powerful enough to navigate through the huge files in an efficient manner. The encroaching Y2K dilemma presented yet another problem and made it even more pressing to find a replacement for the fragmented system.
After looking closely at 14 different systems, The Post narrowed it down to four and then chose Artesia's digital asset management system due to its scalability and cost effectiveness. "TEAMS offered a more phased-in implementation of the system Ö and it was more attractive to us from a cost standpoint," Olson said.
"The first thing we did was to put 20 years of archives into the system," he explained. The company can also input graphics and paginated files into the database as well as use the system to disseminate content to third parties.
Accessed through a Web browser, The Post's version of TEAMS offers search engines that are familiar to workers, minimizing the learning curve. In fact, training classes were skipped because employees found they were able to navigate the system using just a few pages of documentation and a handbook, according to Olson.
"TEAMS offers [different] kinds of clients -- one is a Web browser. We chose the Web browser because it was easier to install," Olson said. "We could just give people in remote locations a URL and they could get in."
The newspaper is happy witht the system and plans to upgrade for faster searches.
"We hope to upgrade the system to Oracle 8i, which should allow us to make searches faster and more powerful," Olson said.
Upgrading will also enable The Post to better customize its searches. For example, instead of cross-referencing two separate search criteria in the database, they will be able to search for commonalities right from the start.
With a Sunday circulation in excess of 1 million and more than 780,000 daily subscriptions to print, it's no wonder The Washington Post supports more than 1,100 log-ons for the TEAMS technology, including 850 people in the newsroom and other individuals from the marketing, editorial and corporate departments.
When such an enormous amount of material is created and re-used daily, being able to locate information quickly is of utmost importance.
Artesia recently released another TEAMS extension, which will enable it to efficiently import and assemble QuarkXPress components.
With its enhanced support for Quark, TEAMS users can better integrate their Quark assets into all of their cross-media publishing and marketing activities, said Artesia. (See related story page 32).
In addition to The Washington Post, clients include Tribune Media Services, CenterSeat.com, and the Library of Congress' National Digital Library.
Artesia Technologies
301.548.4000
www.artesiatech.com