Indiana University Unifies Campus Content Statewide with PhotoShelter

90,000 Stories, One Platform

Indiana University isn’t just a place of learning; it’s a living, breathing tapestry of 90,000 stories unfolding across nine campuses and 930+ academic programs. From groundbreaking research to vibrant student life, every moment at IU is a potential photo op. But managing the visual narrative of such a vast institution? That’s where things got tricky.

The Challenge: Media Management Frustration

James Brosher, a photographer at Indiana University, knows all too well the complexities of managing visual content across a large institution. His daily workflow involves capturing and organizing thousands of images, but the tools they used before PhotoShelter made this task far more difficult than needed.

• Assets scattered across platforms. The team’s use of multiple platforms, including Widen, Box, and Google Drive, made it difficult to keep track of assets. API failures, delayed updates, and difficulty adding new content caused frequent upload delays. “Finding assets was always a challenge. We also faced significant issues with our provider’s API. It was breaking all the time and it was hard to add new things to that system. We often had to wait a day for it to update.” 
• Impossible to find images. With images scattered across different platforms, James and his team were inundated with emails from stakeholders asking where specific photos were located. They would often “just send off Box and Google Drive links” to share images. 
• No easy way to collaborate or share with internal partners. Without a centralized cloud storage solution, the team struggled to review images, select final assets, and deliver files to stakeholders with customized permissions.

“Most times, our assets would end up on Google, but then there might be a few images that designers might want to use for an admissions book that they wouldn’t know were there, and so we would have to manually dig for them.”

James Brosher, Photographer

The Solution: Empowering Storytellers, Simplifying Access

Before implementing PhotoShelter, managing and sharing media assets was cumbersome and inefficient. Now, the team has streamlined its processes and significantly improved its workflow. Here’s how:

• Self-service with one centralized DAM. James told us, “With close to a quarter million images in our library, our team is able to find the things they need by simply searching on their own.” 
• Streamlining with Smart Galleries. The team utilized PhotoShelter’s integration with Photo Mechanic to automate tagging and asset management. Smart Galleries were set up to automatically sort and share assets based on predefined criteria. James said, “It’s really nice to not have to worry about keywording and tagging every little thing in a picture.”
• Automation with Artificial Intelligence. Searching for specific assets is simple with PhotoShelter AI. “We have a school of optometry and every few years we do a creative refresh for them. So when we need pictures of people in glasses, we can just type in ‘glasses’ and we get to choose from several thousands of photos. That wouldn’t have been possible before,” James explains.

Connected Asset Libraries

PhotoShelter’s integrated accounts feature allowed different departments to maintain their own organizational structures while still being part of a cohesive system.

James told us, “We are a large university system with photo and video professionals working within several units on our nine campuses around the state. The communications unit at our campus in South Bend has their own PhotoShelter account which is integrated with ours. So we’re able to see and pull assets from their system and vice versa. Same thing with the School of Medicine which is based in Indianapolis as well as the IU Bloomington Athletics department. We utilize the partner collections on the back end so when we shoot something for athletics we’ll put it in their partner collection and they can see it instantly.”

Uploading Files and Collaborating within the DAM

Workspaces enabled the team to collaborate more effectively, fine-tuning galleries and finalizing images before publication.

“Just having self-service for our Marcom community has been really helpful. We use Workspaces to gather pictures for an Exposure post or special project. People can throw in their favorite photos from an event, we can do the edits there, approve photos and pull them into our project,” said James, emphasizing how it reduced the number of requests the team had to handle. “That reduces the amount of emails that we all get saying, ‘Hey, I’m looking for X, Y or Z.’ Now, if that comes to us, it’s a very special situation, and it might prompt us to go do a photoshoot for our client or partner. So that’s been another huge benefit of PhotoShelter.”

“The best part about [moving to PhotoShelter] was we were able to consolidate two systems into one. So instead of having to put things in Widen for our designers and then also have Google Drive off to the side – where sometimes things wouldn’t get put in the right spot, or were in both places where they need to be – now we just have one central spot where we put everything, and that has made our lives so much easier on our photo team.”

James Brosher, Photographer

A Winning Formula for Showcasing Hoosier Pride

Indiana University’s partnership with PhotoShelter isn’t just about streamlining media management; it’s about empowering storytellers and amplifying the Hoosier spirit. With a centralized, intuitive platform, automated workflows, and seamless collaboration tools, IU has transformed its visual storytelling capabilities. Now, every photo, every asset, every piece of IU’s vibrant tapestry is easily accessible, ready to be shared with the world.

“PhotoShelter has been helpful in solidifying our brand within the university as a whole, with our MarComm partners. They all have access to high quality brand photography. Before, if there was a unit on campus and they wanted to put out a newsletter or report, they may be looking at Google Images or finding photos from who knows where. Now, they have access to our visuals portal. And I’ve seen this while walking around campus. You see some of the signage that gets used. And you start recognizing some pictures. That’s helped elevate the brand photography at IU in general, because more people have access to high quality pictures.”

James Brosher, Photographer