There a lot of different tools at this point that serve a range of different purposes for organizing, storing, preserving, presenting, exhibiting digital collections. My quick initial list would include, DSpace, Omeka, Greenstone, ContentDM and Viewshare. I would likely also include more generic content management systems like WordPress and Drupal, and some sites like Flickr and Historypin that can be used to serve similar purposes. Libraries, Archives, and Museums are using any and all of these tools (and more) and it can get a bit overwhelming and a bit confusing. Which tools are useful toward what ends?

I would be interested in talking through what tools participants are using and to what ends. We could make good use of the time by trying to talk through the situations in which one would want to chose each of these tools. As a result, I would love to leave with a straightforward short document, or draft of a document, that lays out what each tool is best used for and which tools can play nice with each other. Alternatively, we could work through pulling together a set of examples of successfully uses of each of these tools (and any others) as a kind of tour of these different software tools in use. My hope would be for everyone who participates to learn more about these (and other) tools for working with digital collections and that we could share some of the things we learn with anyone else who might be interested.

I am particularly interested in the potential for developing guidance on how these collection tools can be used to complement eachother. For example, see this draft documentation I am working up on using Viewshare and Omeka together.

So please suggest any of the following in the comments:

1. Your general interest
2. Other tools we should consider
3. Ways you would like to categorize or organize these tools
4. Examples of the tools in use that you think exemplify their best use cases
5. Other approaches to organizing the session