Streamlining DAM Processes at a Small Cultural Institution
From frustration to possibility: How Placer County Museums transformed its workflows and extended team resources by transitioning to Terentia
© Placer County Museums Division
Key figures & objectives
2x
faster uploads
1,579
average monthly uploads
9,723+
assets in DAMS (so far!)
Organization
Placer County Museums Division
Headquarters
Auburn, California
Curator of Archives
Kelsey Monahan
Situated in sunny Greater Sacramento, California, the Placer County Museums Division has been a staple in Placer County since 1948. Today, the division is home to eight diverse museums and an archive and collections facility that houses a range of historical artifacts.
With 20,000 square feet of physical collections space and multiple sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the museums weave together a rich tapestry of experiences and artifacts designed to “tell the diverse history of Placer County and its peoples.”
In addition to its physical collections, Placer County Museums hosts more than 60,000 records in its digital asset management system (DAMS), including objects, photos, archives, and its library collection, maintaining a total of 5 TB of digitized material.
Kelsey Monahan, Curator of Archives, spoke with us to share how adopting Terentia’s DAMS transformed the way Placer County Museums handles its digital asset management, improving workflows and creating efficiencies that are saving valuable time.
Exterior of the Golden Drift Museum, located in Dutch Flat, California. © Placer County Museums Division
Objectives
In 2024, Placer County Museums’ existing digital preservation system contract was up for another 3-year renewal. They had acquired the system hoping it would function as a DAMS, but unfortunately, this was not happening in practice.
As such, renewing the existing contract was not a foregone conclusion. Kelsey and the leadership team were experiencing numerous challenges with the system, and given these challenges, they agreed they were facing the perfect opportunity to find a better solution.
Fortunately, many new DAMS had come to market since Placer County Museums signed their contract 6 years ago, and Kelsey had options to choose from.
She was on a mission to find a new system that would address functionality issues with the existing system, be more user-friendly and affordable, and deliver helpful customer support for any questions or troubleshooting.
Exhibition inside the Gold Rush Museum. © Placer County Museums Division
The most difficult functionality challenge Kelsey was facing was that she could not integrate Placer County Museums’ metadata from its third-party content management system (CMS) into its existing digital preservation system.
Furthermore, she needed to download external tools to ingest data and digital assets into the system, which was cumbersome and inefficient.
The system was also difficult to use. It required a lot of coding and was not user-friendly or intuitive. This meant that Kelsey had to spend a lot of extra time learning how to use it—precious time that would be better spent on ingesting and managing assets.
In addition, she was frequently fielding complaints from the public, who were also having trouble using the system’s public-facing portal.
Despite its high costs, Kelsey also wasn’t receiving the client support she needed, so she capitalized on the opportunity to find a cloud-native DAMS that would meet Placer County Museums’ needs.
Solution
After careful consideration, Placer County Museums adopted Terentia’s digital asset management system in July 2024.
Kelsey says, “Terentia seemed like the perfect mix between a traditional corporate DAMS and digital preservation for cultural institutions.”
She chose the Terentia platform for several key reasons: it is cloud-native, it could integrate with Placer County Museums’ existing CMS, and most importantly, the Terentia team would be able to support the migration of decades of custom metadata from its existing CMS to the new Terentia DAMS.
She especially appreciated Terentia’s willingness to jump in and find a way to solve this long-standing block.
In addition to offering a DAMS that better meets her needs, Kelsey is also grateful that the Terentia platform offers built-in collections management and collections engagement solutions.
“One of the reasons why I really like Terentia [as a DAMS] is that it’s built like a CMS and my museum brain can intuit its functionality,” she notes.
“Terentia seemed like the perfect mix between a traditional corporate DAMS and digital preservation for cultural institutions.”
Kelsey Monahan
Curator of Archives
Outcomes
The Terentia DAMS has helped the Placer County Museums team save time and streamline workflows by offering fully-integrated tools that support efficiency. It is also much easier to use—which both Kelsey and the museum staff appreciate.
Kelsey has especially noticed how the new DAMS is helping her save significant time at the ingestion stage.
Notably, the DAMS’ bulk upload capabilities have halved the time it takes her to ingest new assets. For example, she can now upload 800 JPEGs in 15 minutes, which used to take more than 30 minutes.
Using the bulk metadata editing tool to “apply all” during ingest has also saved Kelsey considerable time, as she no longer has to manually edit each individual file. The DAMS can also store published and unpublished assets following ingest, which is very helpful.
Digital assets from the Picture Book of Chinese Immortals and Whimsical Figures (1886) in the Terentia DAMS. © Placer County Museums Division
Along with the time saved during ingest, the Terentia DAMS has also helped Placer County Museums streamline workflows by enabling them to free up space and reduce strain on their network.
Kelsey also mentions she found it simple to learn the system as a one-person digitization team. Rather than feeling frustrated and spending time trying to figure out how the system works or spending a lot of time coding, Kelsey notes:
“I’ve really enjoyed training on the Terentia DAMS and getting to know the system, including customizing my views and moving fields around. Overall, I found it really easy to use.”
Record from the Picture Book of Chinese Immortals and Whimsical Figures (1886) in the Terentia DAMS. © Placer County Museums Division
The Terentia team’s incremental setup approach, which ensured the museum staff did not feel overwhelmed when adapting to the new DAMS, was another benefit of choosing Terentia.
Kelsey also appreciates the “amazing” ongoing support that she and the team have received from Mylène Roussy, Project Manager & Implementation Lead at Terentia.
“Switching to a new DAMS platform can feel overwhelming, but at Terentia, we make it easier for our clients by breaking the process into manageable steps,” Mylène shares.
“Our team’s hands-on operational experience helps us understand the practical challenges institutions face. We’re there to guide museums every step of the way to ensure a smooth, stress-free transition.”
Though its software is purposefully designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, Terentia also provides free training to ensure that users feel comfortable and are getting the most from the platform.
"I’ve really enjoyed training on the Terentia DAMS and getting to know the system, including customizing my views and moving fields around. Overall, I found it really easy to use."
Kelsey Monahan
Curator of Archives
Future
Using Terentia’s DAMS has already helped Placer County Museums better manage its digital assets. Kelsey’s vision for the future includes using the Terentia platform to deliver community access to a large collection of photo records, exploring additional integrations, and using AI-powered photo recognition.
The Terentia team is currently migrating decades of Placer County Museums’ custom metadata into the Terentia DAMS from the existing CMS, which will, in Kelsey’s words, have a “huge” impact when completed.
Kelsey is also optimistic about the possibility of integrating Placer County Museums’ CMS with the Terentia DAMS. She says:
“I think integrating our current CMS with Terentia DAMS would help a lot. Our team is uploading high resolution photos to our CMS and constantly gets told we’re going over our network allowance for space. So, I’m hoping [the Terentia platform and its scalability] will really help us there.”
Exhibition inside the Bernhard Museum Complex. © Placer County Museums Division
In addition to using Terentia’s DAMS, Kelsey is also looking forward to using Terentia’s Collections Online, a collections engagement tool that empowers GLAM organizations to create an online repository that people can explore on any device.
She foresees using Collections Online to publish Placer County Museums’ large collection of photo records, which will deliver community access. She is especially excited to share the online collection with Placer County’s community Facebook group, which is made up of members who care deeply about the area’s history and its archives.
“Placer has over 37,000 photo records and they’re our most requested resource. I’m always being asked, ’Do you have any photos of this?’ I’m really hoping having an online collection that supports photo requests will make people see the Museums’ value and what we have in our collection once we get all our wonderful data and scans online,” Kelsey says.
With this valuable tool available, she is also hopeful that improving access to the rich photo collection will lead to fewer research requests for her to field.
Placer County Deeds and Official Records. © Placer County Museums Division
In addition to training community volunteers to use the Terentia DAMS, Kelsey is also looking to explore additional platform integrations, such as with WordPress, noting, “I’m at the phase where I’m really excited for all the features.”
She is also interested in learning more about using AI-powered photo recognition to identify people in archival materials, while adhering to ethical guidelines.
By working with Terentia, Kelsey has moved from being frustrated with a system that wasn’t working for Placer County Museums’ needs to a DAMS that is easy to use and has left her dreaming of future ways to use the Terentia platform to share digital assets on an even greater scale.
Key takeaways
Streamlined workflows
Reduced ingestion time by 50% while simplifying metadata management
User-friendly DAMS
Empowers a small team to accomplish more via an intuitive interface and attentive client support
Future-ready solutions
Positioned to expand community engagement and maximize the value of their digital assets
Want to transform your DAMS?
You can with Terentia! We’d be happy to support you in building a tech stack that better suits your needs, streamlines workflows, and saves you valuable time. Contact us to book your personalized demo and learn more.