My So-Called DAM Life
For the most part it just kinda happened and I eased into this profession. I still have loads to learn and I always feel like I don’t know anything, but I think everyone feels that way. Shifting sands this profession is, everything is a moving target. So, at the request of one of my loyal readers, I will blog about the fantastical makings of this particular digital asset manager. I’ll just Insert some atmospheric Leatherface into the iPod jukebox and just start at the beginning, the very beginning. The 1990′s… My very first “real” job ever. I spend a lot of time online in the 90s, a very inappropriate amount of time. This was back in the day when AOL charged by the hour, and since I wasn’t smart enough (yet) to get AOL for free, my bills were high. So I started building websites for fun, then my friends… Read More »
What kinda ‘Who’ do you need to make DAM work?
Digital Asset Management is not just an application, but it is a business practice requiring certain roles in place for success in any organization. For the most part the profession of Digital Asset Management is not fully understood, except for by those in the ‘know’. This is due in part to the maturation and growth of the field in just over the last few years. Have you taken a look at the landscape of content management technologies recently? This is no longer a one-trick pony in a one-horse town, but a process that requires support from a skilled selection of professionals and has touch-points across the organization. To quote one of my favorite bloggers on DAM, H. de Gyor, “Digital Asset Management is a business need, not just a technology or another database”. Many institutions who have systems that were implemented over 4 years ago are now facing the challenges… Read More »
Professional Silos: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel!
Call it a rant, I call it a blog “posting”. Lately, I have become acutely aware that there exists a major hurdle to digital project success (specifically digital asset management) that we who work in institutions need to be aware of. I recently had a colleague return from an Archives Conference abroad that focused on Digital Asset Management and to put it lightly her mind was blown. She’s not an archivist, she’s not a digital asset manager, but she is an administrative assistant in a cultural institution. Her reactions to what she learned further confirmed some of my own feelings I had after recently speaking at both a Digital Asset Management conference and an Archives conference. Which is that, technology has changed our work environments and roles more than most people are aware. It is no longer acceptable to operate in a silo and remain unaware of how other professions… Read More »
Food for thought…a wandering down future lane.
I’ve recently been working my way through Terry Goodkind’s, Sword of Truth series on audio book. Great series, I highly recommend it. The audio book version I have was digitized from the original cassette tapes (don’t worry I’m not lugging around a cassette player, I gave that up two years ago) and this morning I took note of something really interesting about them. Although my recordings are .mp3s they still have the original cassette tape intros and outros still present. Part of the intro to each “cassette tape” is the narrator stating the recordings Library of Congress’ RC number, “RC41067″, page count (573) and the number of cassette sides (21) it covers. Cataloging Yesterday and Today: Where am I going with this? Well, other than the obvious kitsch value, think about how these cassettes might have been cataloged. You would assume the cataloger would have recorded that the audio recording… Read More »
