How UVM Built a Central Library that Works for Every Department

Unifying the brand across a diverse campus

The University of Vermont is a top-tier, R1, research institution focusing on liberal arts, health, and the environment. It occupies a sweet spot in higher education, offering the resources of a large university with the mentorship feel of a small college. To keep their brand consistent across dozens of departments, UVM needed a better way to manage their massive photo library. The Strategic Communications team required a single system that worked for the entire campus.

The Challenge: Silos that made finding files impossible

Creative Director Cody Silfies manages the university’s visual identity and handles internal requests for photos. Days were often consumed by hunting down files scattered across different drives and inboxes. Without a central system, retrieving assets was a slow, manual process.

• Files were hidden in too many places. Images lived on shared drives or individual hard drives, so there was no single place to browse the library. If the central team needed photos from Student Life, they had to email staff and wait while someone dug through folders manually.
• Locating original high-res files required detective work. Staff often sent tiny, pixelated web images to Cody asking for the original high-resolution version. He had to hunt through thousands of photos and guess search or metadata criteria like the creation date and/or filename to find the right one.
• Six years of photos were effectively lost due to bad tagging. The labeling system was haphazard and inconsistent, making it impossible to search the archive reliably. Because nothing was tagged with a standard system, the institution’s visual history was gathering dust instead of being used.
• Separate accounts wasted money and time, and made collaboration impossible. University units like the College of Medicine and Athletics originally bought and managed their own separate systems because they needed strict privacy settings and specialized workflows. 

“We had six years of photo and video assets, and no one could find anything because nothing was tagged appropriately.”

Cody Silfies, Creative Director, University of Vermont

The Solution: Getting the whole campus on the same page

Before, the team was constantly reacting to problems and searching for lost files. Now, they operate proactively with a smart system that makes assets easy to find.

• The team built a true home base for all content. They pitched the platform as an easy, self-service system for anyone at the university. Cody notes, “Having a central location, the UVM portal, for people in the university community to find assets has been incredibly helpful.”
• Single sign-on controls who sees what. Single sign-on (SSO) lets the team ensure that “what’s private stays private, and what’s available to the public or media is ready to go,” Silfies explains. It gives them total control over permissions without manual upkeep.
• PhotoShelter AI stopped the manual digging. With AI Visual Search, users can now search for a description like “purple blouse” and instantly find the right photo. And with PeopleID, “senior leadership or media experts automatically feed into their respective galleries.”

• Smart Galleries automate public collections. By tagging a photo as ‘Stratcom Select,’ and utilizing Smart Galleries, selected/approved photos automatically appear in a public gallery without anyone moving files. The media relations team can simply open a link and grab what they need immediately—or share it with their media contacts without worrying about low-quality or incorrect photos being in the mix.

“For anything flowing through our office, I make sure it’s properly tagged so five or six years down the line we can still find it.”

Cody Silfies, Creative Director, University of Vermont

Solving the silo problem with partitioned libraries

Departments originally bought their own separate digital asset management systems because they needed control over strict privacy requirements and specialized workflows. But this setup wasted time and money, and made cross-collaboration difficult.

UVM used the PhotoShelter separate teams feature to merge everyone into one while keeping their data totally isolated:

• Privacy is guaranteed. The medical school (Larner College of Medicine) kept its own private portal within the system. No one sees their files unless invited, which satisfies potential HIPAA issues and proprietary asset requirements.
• Costs dropped immediately. As Cody Silfies noted, “You don’t need to be paying $10,000 for your one little instance” when you can share the main license for a fraction of the price.
• Contract management is simple. The “nightmare” of managing multiple renewals months in advance is gone. There is now a single agreement for the university that covers all departments.

A picture-perfect future with a connected campus

Moving to PhotoShelter fixed the structural problems between departments. By using partitioned libraries, units such as Athletics and Medicine maintain their independence and privacy without requiring the university to purchase duplicate software.

“PhotoShelter is our central repository for our premium assets. The best of the best. Not a dumping ground. The crème de la crème of what best represents UVM.”

Cody Silfies, Creative Director, University of Vermont