Press - Digital Asset Management

Vancouver Columbian Installs Merlin Digital Asset Management System to Create a Central System for Pictures, Assignment, Text and Pages

Quincy, MA, March 22, 2006 - The Columbian in Vancouver, WA is completing installation of MerlinOne Inc.'s Merlin Digital Asset Management system for use as a picture desk, a universal digital archive and assignment management system. The new Merlin will provide the staff with a single centralized location for all of the newspaper's content: text, photo, graphics and pages, and link them together to make it easy to find related content.

The installation was the end result of a rigorous product evaluation and selection process undertaken by the Columbian. The new Merlin system will replace both a NewsView text archive and IBM NICA photo system. The paper is privately owned and has been publishing since 1890.

Merlin will serve as the Columbian's picture desk, taking live feeds from the wire services as well as input of locally scanned and digital images from the newspaper's photo staff. Photos in the system are automatically routed for production and long-term archival storage.

The integrated Trax assignment management system is used to initiate and manage photo or graphic requests, manage staff workload and track deadlines. As photos and graphics are completed and uploaded into the system, they are linked to the assignment and workflow status is automatically updated. Even after publication, assignment history, contacts, directions, usage rights, publication data, technical data and outtakes remain linked to the content as long as it is kept in the system.

The Columbian will flow published stories and PDF pages to Merlin from its new Modulo Concerto front-end system. Merlin's import process captures text, pages and embedded metadata (data about data) tags for full-text searching. Once in Merlin, the published page is automatically linked to individual source stories, photos and graphics making it easy to find source content that appears on any page. Stories will be exported as XML files from Merlin to third-party vendors for resale.

MerlinOne will convert and import the Columbian's legacy text and photos from the older generation systems. The existing archive content will seamlessly become part of the new Merlin universal archive when installation is completed.

About MerlinOne - MerlinOne, Inc. is a leading provider of digital asset management systems and electronic document discovery platforms. E-Sheets® is the foremost electronic tearsheets service. The Merlin picture desk management solution has over 140 major installations at corporations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Harvard University, Pfizer, Habitat for Humanity and The White House. MerlinOne technology helps companies manage photos, text, graphics, PDFs, multimedia and e-discovery material.

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