DIGITAL ARCHIVIST

Thursday, 10th May 2012
By Deb Hunt
posted on Fumsi

When clients contact Information Edge to help them get a handle on their organisational assets, they are usually at a point of feeling crushed under an avalanche of information. Their IT staff are overwhelmed and realise they cannot provide the information organisation needed.

Sadly, I do not tell most of my clients up front that I have a Masters in Library Science degree as I find that limits their perception of what I bring to the table and how Information Edge can empower them to re-find and reuse their content. Despite the fact that my skill set proves highly valuable in digital asset management projects, I usually wait until I’m well into a project before I tell them. They are often shocked to learn this.

Digital librarians bring distinct skills to DAM projects:

• An understanding of audiences: who they are, what they look for and how.
• Expertise in building metadata schemas and taxonomies.
• Recognising the business value that finding information brings to an organisation.
• Experience creating IP policies that address copyright issues.
• Experience and expertise organising assets of all kinds and knowing that you get out of a record what you put into it.
• Knowing how to organise information and assets for findability.
• Generally they are viewed as neutral, working for the good of the entire organisation.
• Having a big picture view
• Can contribute to workflow strategies
• Able to prioritise what needs to be indexed first and why.
• Knowing to start small and let the success of a DAM project speak for itself.

When I started doing DAM, IT folks doubted my expertise and the value I brought to projects. Now, they welcome me with open arms, knowing I bring to the table skills and expertise they may not have. As a team, we provide the solutions our clients need.

Digital librarians are working hard to reshape the librarian stereotype with the deep expertise and value they bring to DAM and other projects. They make sure one’s DAM house is in order.

The Alphabet Soup of Digital Content Management
January 20, 2012
-from  wavecorp.com WAVE Blog,

We recently spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison E-Business Consortium.
What a great group of engaged attendees all wrestling with content management issues.

What was really striking about the discussion of content management is how much the acronyms just add to the confusion about choosing some type of software to manage digital content.  Companies all had different acronyms to reference the different repositories they were using to manage their artwork, files, pricing, marketing collateral, etc.

What one company called Content Management, another called Web Asset Management.  No one could agree what constituted an Enterprise system and before the end of the day it sounded like a jumble of letters, none of which helped people understand the functionality they had or needed.

I had great empathy for the customers who are looking for some way to manage, collaborate, edit and distribute their content and are trying to determine what is the best fit for the problem.  We get calls from customers saying, “We need to look at a DAM system.”  Our first follow up is, “Tell us about what you’re trying to accomplish” because sometimes that functionality bleeds over into PIM (Product Information Management – managing product and pricing information) or Web publishing, or includes functionality that some might consider under DAM, or not.

What we recommended is instead of trying to pick the alphabet solution that describes the need, that companies would be better off trying to identify the pain points they are trying to address as well as thinking through the entire work flow.

• What are you trying to manage and why?
• What are you using it for?
• Who else needs to have that information and how do you want to get it to them?
• Who decides what the FINAL source is and how is that controlled?

Instead of starting with a search for a product, it’s time to take a step back.  Putting a software solution on top of an inefficient workflow just makes that inefficiency faster.  Software alone won’t solve the issue without understanding how it fits in the larger needs of the users and the company.  Start with evaluating the work processes, from start to finish.  Step outside of the “we’ve just always done it that way.”  Ask why?  Is there a better way to do it?  Are there steps that are redundant? Step outside the legacy systems that may already be in place.  If those were not there, how would you do it? Once you can identify the work that needs to get done, and the resources you will need to do it, then you can look at solutions to help that process along.  Then you can focus on the solutions, regardless of the acronym du jour for those products.

Tags:  CMS, Content Management, DAM, ECM, PIM, WCM

from Digital Asset Management – Covering Your Assets UK

Simply put, Digital Asset Management (DAM) products provide a way to organise your company’s valuable files – your ‘digital assets’ – in a way that makes them quick-to-find and easy to access.
Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) live or die by their data. In an information economy, just about every business owner understands that they can gain a huge advantage over their competitors by handling their business data more effectively than the next guy. Companies are only as good as the data they hold, how quickly and flexibly they can access it to make use of it.

Digital Asset Management is familiar to all of us in some form. We all process digital assets (files), whether as documents sent to us via email, photos from digital cameras, or files from USB keys. In each example, we follow a system of folder structures, labels, hierarchies, etc. These systems allow us to find and manipulate these assets in a predictable way.
But if your files are of significant value to your organisation, number in the thousands, or need to be accessible by co-workers and clients all over the world, you need the power and flexibility of a DAM system. Think of your operating systems as the warehouse where you keep all the crucial data on which your business depends. DAM is your inventory control system, security guard, facility manager and global courier service, all rolled into one.

WinterGreen Research announces that it has a new study on digital asset content management markets. Systems are poised for significant growth as the entertainment and media industry adopts digital media technology. The costs of making and distributing film goes way down, video and images are repurposed and reused, different types of entertainment is being developed based on what ordinary people create and watch on UTube. Changes relate to purchase of marketing and Web 2.0 based applications based on XML and integration technologies.

Digital asset content management solutions matter to corporate IT because they are used to manage the ever-increasing volumes of information used by marketing departments dispersed all over the world. Media, video, and Web content needs to conform to mounting regulatory requirements and legislative pressure. Digital asset content management systems are used by marketing departments to provide information in a manner that is responsive to local needs and requests from distributors for material that is highly localized and personalized.

Caching systems are evolving inside repository systems to speed up delivery of information. Alternative delivery systems are creating flexibility for document and content capabilities. The entry of SaaS players and open source players changes the market by giving Web 2.0 market participants strategic advantage.

Protecting a global brand, delivering streaming video to a corporate portal, and making complex images available to promote products and services are done. Managing rich media assets is an essential component of an enterprise content platform. Increasing volumes of rich media assets means companies are struggling to easily find, manipulate and re-purpose rich media content across the enterprise. The digital brand management systems put users in control of rich media assets.

Digital asset content management markets at $203 million in 2007 are anticipated to reach $558.6 million by 2014. Market growth is a direct result of movements to leverage the Internet as a channel, respond to implementation of broadband networks for video and image transmission, create automated marketing systems implementation, and leverage market opportunities brought by the ability to have data sent over portable wireless devices. Disparate changes in the presentation of video and image content promise to drive market growth.

http://www.reportlinker.com/

A compelling lesson for digital asset management via a cartoon on YouTube:
Digital Preservation and Nuclear Disaster: An Animation