Through a glass darkly: Lessons from The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens digital asset management implementation

In this paper, two project leads review and analyse the scoping and implementation of the first digital asset management (DAM) system in a multi-hyphenate cultural heritage organisation. They recount key decisions made during the process and trace their impacts — positive and negative — within the context of the current state of The Huntington DAM (known as RAIL) as a pilot platform in an emerging ecosystem of institutional data management. The paper concludes with the system roadmap for the next several years.