A digital assets management system for Victoria University Library

Abstract

The study aimed at developing a Digital Assets Management system for Victoria University library. The study based on four objectives which were to: Examine the current system of managing digital assets at Victoria University library, Identify the strengths and challenges of the current digital assets management system at Victoria University library, Establish the requirements necessary to develop a Digital Assets Management system and to Design and develop a Digital Assets Management system for the Victoria University library. The study used a case study and a qualitative research methodology to get information from the respondents. Interviews, observations and document review methods were used to collect the data from the respondents. The researchers purposively selected 5 administrators and 4 library staff and conveniently selected 6 students to participate in the study. The actual respondents were 2 administrative staff, 2 library staff and 3 students. There is no defined system of managing digital assets at Victoria University as the different university departments manage, share and store them differently. The challenges of this system were; duplicate files, time consuming, lack of preservation, lack of proper access controls and insights into digital assets usage and lack of offline access. The functional requirements that were necessary to develop the system were; search functionality, analytics, user log in, upload, view and download of digital assets. The non-functional requirements were performance, usability, system security, naming conventions and maintenance. The study recommended that a Digital Assets Management system should be developed to collect digital assets from the different departments in order to ease their access, retrieval and storage. The study recommended that the Victoria University management should organize trainings for stakeholders on how to manage digital assets, should support digitization of assets by procuring digitizing equipment and to establish guidelines and policies on how to manage digital assets at Victoria University.