Great News! The “M:\ Drive” is going away!
As you are probably aware, the campus media share (commonly known as the M:\ Drive) has been full for quite some time. Even before that happened, Network Services had been working on and testing a better solution. We were held up for a while due to other projects, under-staffing, and some technical limitations of our aging storage solution that we needed to work around. However, today, I am happy to announce that this solution is in place and running.
The new platform is a web-based application, belonging to a software category known as Digital Asset Management (DAM). Building the DAM has been very rewarding, and the application will continue to serve the campus into the future. No more digging through endless folder structures to find what you’re looking for. Everything is now tagged and searchable. Our student technicians and I have spent much of the past two months uploading and tagging over 16,000 existing photos from the old share. Collectively, these resources have been tagged 573,948 times with a total of 8,842 keywords, so we have a great place to start! Curated “Featured Collections” will soon grant users quick access to some of the best resources in various categories. Then, we will only need to schedule some training sessions.
All Faculty and Staff users will have access to browse, request, and submit assets and tags for approval. Users who are heavily involved in campus marketing activities, social media, and other large projects requiring constant access to resources will be able to upload, download, and tag resources without approval, but will require additional training first to ensure that everything stays properly organized.
The system can be reached from on or off campus from your desktop or mobile browser. You will login with your FlashLine credentials. You can even upload resources directly from your smartphone. We are very excited to offer this new service. Keep your eyes open for emails regarding training opportunities and the official launch of the platform soon!