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 »
FAQ – My Thoughts on MLIS and MY Background
Here’s a list of questions that people frequently email me regarding folks in my line of work (digital asset and content management): 1. About me and the Rutgers MLIS program: Since I had already been working in the field for 6 years (digital archives and digital asset management) when I entered the program, my advisor let me take whatever classes I wanted. He told me to get in and then get out. I honestly can’t even remember what classes I took. Since I was in the process of transitioning from non-profit digital archives work back to advertising (corporate knowledge management) work, much of the curriculum was either a repeat of what I had been practicing in the field or I took the course just to get the credits. I do recall taking metadata, records management, interface design, information visualization and a class on web 2.0 (which was pretty funny). The… Read More »
Getting Rid of the R.O.T!: A friendly reminder
It’s my favorite and most well suited acronym and I apply the philosophy behind it to just about every project I encounter. It stands for: Redundant, Outdated and Trivial and it refers to content and information you’re just better off living without or not creating in the first place. In order to really see something clearly you have to get rid of all the crud thats surrounding it. I (others included) call this simple method “getting rid of the R.O.T”. Nothing is worse than finding the same digital asset in over a zillion places in one system, it devalues the original and is a headache to seek out and destroy all existing versions. For the next point, nothing makes information more irrelevant that when it is outdated. Outdated information can not be leveraged nor can you receive any ROI on it being available, the best thing to do is just… Read More »
About me:
Metadata and Taxonomies are my thing. I spend an awful lot of time drinking coffee and having existential dilemmas on how to categorize what the hell I do for a living.
Recent Posts
What I’m Reading Now
- The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013 December 15, 2011 (author unknown)
- Book Deals: Blogging team Blondie and Brownie got... December 14, 2011 Amanda Kludt
- Twitter hits the big time with its new Art Deco headquarters (pics) December 8, 2011 Jolie O'Dell
- Apparently The Internet Is A Complete Waste Of Time December 2, 2011 Jon Mitchell
- Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining November 28, 2011 (author unknown)
- Man With 15 Kids by 13 Different Women Isn't Done Making Babies Yet [Uk] November 27, 2011 Lauri Apple