It has a million rabbit trails and “areas of specialization,” and even more that are no longer relevant or applicable. It’s dynamic and yet somehow manages to woo you in with creature comforts. It’s never stationary, but sometimes focuses on staying power. You can’t put your finger on it, yet we have to put OUR finger on it to do our jobs.

You often work alone, but your presence is felt by many. Everything is always different around you, yet you have to make it consistent. There is so much out there, yet you have to define the needle in the haystack so that it can be found.

THIS IS THE DOMAIN OF THE KNOWLEDGE WORKER

Step 1

Fire up Automator and select File > New > Custom

Step 2

Create your Automation by dragging commands, called actions, into the Automator workspace starting with “Ask for Finder Items”.

Screenshot - MAC Automator Action

Step 3

Drag over “Get Folder Contents” from the Action list to the automator workspace. For my purposes I usually check the “Repeat for each subfolder found” depending on how deep you need to go, but I usually want EVERYTHING.

Screenshot - MAC Automator Workspace

Step 4

Drag over “New Text File” from the Action list to the automator workspace. Add a “save as” title to your text file if you want and then, put it where you want. I usually put it right on my “Desktop”.

Screenshot - MAC Automator Text

Step 5

Time to run it and see if it works. Hit the “Run” (play) button in the top right-hand corner and watch the magic happen. If all works according to plan you will get a dialog box that asks you where you want to look for your dump. In the example below I want to extract a list of the file contents of my Alpha One Labs project directory.

After hitting play, If everything worked you should have an output of the filenames contained in the directory as a text file on your desktop. Remember to save it and now you can extract to you hearts content, whenever you need.

Screenshot - MAC Automator Dialog

Step 6 (optional)
I generally import the txt file into something like Excel via “File > Import > txt file” with the forward slash as my delimiter so I can work with the information better.

Screenshot - Excel Text Import Dialog

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 and family started asking for websites and so on. Soon I started taking jobs listed in the classifieds building “home pages” for small businesses. Long story short, I soon found myself with the title of “Web Designer” and went on to make many websites that today would challenge the aesthetics of Geocities. It was total crap. I used Front Page and whatever other cheap tool I could get my hands on (eventually I upgraded to Dreamweaver) and with some “borrowed” code that I could manipulate. For the most part, I was on my way to a very bright and shinning career in computer assisted design (hey, that’s what it was called then). The important take-away, there are actually two, is I learned how to organize information and blend that with design. Albeit very ugly design, or at least it was after I was through with it. I’ve always been more of a wireframer. I also had to do a LOT of searching for just he appropriate inspiration and images to match the concepts I had created to implement in the design. That’s the second important take-away, I learned a bunch about how to find a needle in a haystack, from first hand experience.

So I was a designer/web designer for around 6 years or so, give or take. Now, in amongst the design gigs I would also get these interesting side-gigs. They generally consisted of, “we’ve got a mess of files here, can you clean them up as you seem smart?”. Also, “we’ve got a lot of collected imagery, can you fix those too, so we can find what we are looking for when we need to?”. I quickly learned you could store information in the files themselves and there were some real low-cost-of-entry tools (i.e. Portfolio) that helped you keep lots of images, etc organized. Yes, my first DAM was Extensis Portfolio. I went about littering the known universe with installations of Portfolio and users were happy for a while anyway. It wasn’t until much later, I learned that this thing I found myself doing was called “Digital Asset Management”. My important take-away from these less-traditional DAM gigs was how to quickly asses an information problem, come up with a solution and utilize technology to solve the problem.

Into the New Millennium…

In 2003, I met my good friend and fellow Digital Asset Manager, well at the time he was working under the title archivist. He brought me on as a project assistant for the GAP and under his tutelage I learned what was to shape my formidable DAM years. Along the way, somewhere in between working as a designer and organizing the known universe (I even did some bookkeeping too) I had set my sights on wrapping up my BA and going to get my Masters in Library Science. I heard it was all the rage with folks that had a natural talent for organizing stuff. So working in the archives at the GAP was both my first experience with an archive and with a home-build DAM (I still have nightmares about that one) and cataloging. At the GAP, I learned how to shoot digital and all things related, image quality (they got better with time), lighting, how to upload into a DAM and catalog my brains out. I also learned to leverage existing standards, such as books (some of which I still use today in my work) on particular topics to construct controlled vocabularies and keep my language consistent. In short, I learned to be really anal retentive, stick to the standard and shoot pretty good record photography. All things which have served me very well in my career.

After my contract gig at the GAP was over I decided that the Archives thing was for me and quickly begged my way onto a project at the 92nd Street YMHA. Again, luckily for me, I got to apprentice under one of the most talented archivists I will ever meet and another really amazing archivist in training. One of whom which now happens to be the Head of Archival Processing in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. Both of them, amazing. From these two lovely ladies, I learned a very important lesson, how to determine what’s valuable and worth saving from the junk. Every decision had real, visual consequences. The more boxes and more folders you keep, the more space you will need. Think on that with NYC real estate prices being what they are. You can’t weed down a collection that spans several hundred linear feet, by hanging onto everything. So, here I learned how to label folders the right way, shred until my fingers bled, type up killer finding aids and gained the handy ability to take one look at the contents of a box and determine what’s valuable. A VERY valuable skill indeed which translates to the DAM world well when you find that you need to assess a drive full of who-knows-what and determine what’s worth saving.

Now fresh off the archivist-in-training bus, armed with archival folders, click pencils, archival staples and the most recent Holligner catalog. I was ready to get down to the business of archives, but I wanted something that blended my prior experience as a multimedia programmer and designer (a topic which I happened to get my Associates Degree on) and archives. I knew it existed, it must. The two things were born to be together. So, in 2004, I got my job at the NYU School of Medicine Archives.

At NYU, where some saw an old card catalog and an alumni register in book form I saw a database. Where some saw old photographs, I saw a database that linked that old card catalog to the images themselves. In short, I think it might have just been laziness. I would spend hours/days looking for a particular image requested by a patron. I thought to myself, if this was digital everything would be associated and with a few clicks I could access what I needed and get to work on the next fun digital project. These pesky patron requests were really in the way of me digitizing the world around me. What startled me is that no one else that worked there had thought of it. I guess people like to do endless amounts of tedious work. To reach this aim of the luxurious, data connected archives life, I quickly went to work, creating concepts (my previous design experience came in very handy as I could execute a wireframe with the best of them and design a UI that made sense) and executing what we had the manpower to accomplish. It was never ideal, but it was a start. Some of my ideas never saw the light of day, but boy was it fun. The archives at NYU was where I found that this interesting blend of a technology background, coupled with some archives know-how made me a unique bird indeed.

While at NYU (it was only PT) I started taking small jobs on the side for folks drowning in information needs. I had lots of conversations that started out with “I have this small archive and I could really use some advice as you were referred to me by so-and-so”. So thus began my small-time consultancy which kept me very busy all the while I’m also finishing up my BA and about to begin my MLIS at Rutgers University. I became so busy that after much thought, I had to leave my digital archives lab (NYU) and pursue DAM consulting full-time. I worked in all kinds of places from photography studios to one-person businesses. Taking all my digital archives street smarts with me in an effort to make sense of it all for my clients. Doing the same thing over and over, fixing these peoples broken information lives. Assessing the problem, finding a technological solution, implementing it, writing up some rules to follow and moving on. To this day I believe the only real way to learn is just to do it, swim through the muck if you have to, make a lot of bad decisions that you have to fix and read everything thats topical to reach your goals. This approach has always served me well.

Now, to the Present…
Otherwise known as Single White female currently Seeking DAMs in need

Then in 2008, a very interesting job came along and I dropped consulting and committed to the most fun advertising job ever. I have no idea why my boss hired me, I wasn’t a librarian (yet) and had a completely nontraditional DAM background. However, I’m glad he did. Here I learned exactly what a GLOBAL implementation of a DAM looked like. Prior to this I had worked on smaller DAM implementations, smaller systems, smaller collections and less lofty DAM goals. We had a killer team, that consisted of my boss, a digital asset manager in Austin and myself. We successfully developed what was most recently referred to by a consultant, as the most elegant metadata schema to hit the advertising world. That was a joy to hear and I knew it to be true. That DAM implementation was one that just worked, sure it had its share of problems. Here I further refined my skills of creating a killer controlled vocabulary, developed a further understanding of the crazy world of production houses and creative teams and finding DAMs sweet spot within that world. Good times indeed.

The rest, is history. I finished my MLIS in 2008 (with a 2009 graduation date) at Rutgers University and I’m still in my current job that I left the advertising firm for. I can’t write about that yet, well at least not until some time passes and I’m off chasing some other DAM dream (only a matter of time). I also still do consulting work and greatly enjoy that aspect of my professional life as if you can’t infer from this posting, I do like to mix it up a bit. I hope to start teaching this year and interacting with other younger professionals looking to break it big in DAM. If you find yourself in need of some DAM SOS, you know where to find me. You know what they say, when your big in Japan…

This post is dedicated to my friend Lilly who urged me to write this. She’s a gifted writer and a digital asset manager to watch out for, but don’t ask her for a ride home or you will find yourself hours later in yet another parking garage looking for a car you’ve never been in and probably never will.

Dont Make me Think – Steve Krug
Mental Models – Indi Young
Designing Interfaces – Jennifer Tidwell

Metadata and Taxonomy books

Building Enterprise Taxonomies – Daren L. Stewart
The Accidental Taxonomist – Heather Hedden
Metadata Solutions: Using Metamodels – Adrienne Tannenbaum

Digital Asset Management - David Austerberry
The DAM Book – Peter Krogh

Its a no frills, no promotional sales language, vendor agnostic, approach to just getting to the basics of the technologies on offer. The focus of the list is on the technology aspects of the products as opposed to the features or strengths. Currently, the document has 70+ collaborators including myself (and we are adding more every day). Please contact me if you like to be added to the list of collaborators or visit the link and request access here.

Below is a list of each column featured on the DAM List:

• Vendor
• URL
• Products Offered
• Proprietary or Open Source
• Solutions Offered: Installed, Hosted, SaaS
• Technical Specs: Server (Database)
• Technical Specs: Server (APP/Webserver)
• Technical Specs: Code Base (back-end)
• Technical Specs: Code Base (UI)
• Technical Specs: OS (Server)
• Technical Specs: OS (Client)
• Technical Specs: API (Software)
• Technical Specs: API (Webservice)
• Technical Specs: Search Engine
• Metadata Handling: XMP
• Who’s Using it: non-profits, museums and organizations
• Who’s Using It: corporate and for-profit enterprises

Let’s take Greene and Meissners message and apply it to the digital realm. Working in the digital realm requires the ability to make judicious decisions regarding what to keep, how to keep it and where to keep it. You have to have the ability to say “no” and understand that you can’t keep everything. That folder, filing cabinet and even the human to file it cost a whole lot less than software, databases, servers and technical support. You also cannot keep digital materials in the same exhaustive manner as you might have with analog material. If you have spent most of your career managing analog materials this is a difficult philosophical shift to make, even impossible for some. However, its a shift that is necessary to work in today’s technology driven environment, if you plan on managing digital materials with any success.

Digital Asset Managers understand that every digital asset we choose comes with a cost (resources it will take to manage, upkeep, file formats, migrations etc), therefore we are extremely judicious with both what we keep (the assets) and how we keep it (the metadata). We have to say “no” when something is just outside the scope of the collection or would involve to much manual metadata entry. Whenever possibly we side with automation as opposed to human processing or cataloging. For example a system that required every time an asset was used a job number to be entered into a metadata field is just not scalable over time. A more sensible approach would be that the ordering system and the DAM talked to one another and populated that field automatically. If that wasn’t possible then the digital asset manager might choose to only record the first order number associated with the asset.

In general digital asset managers think holistically and try to understand things on a iterative level. We understand that adopting a particular standard for applying information to assets can have vast repercussions down the line and nothing is ever permanent as technology changes yesterday. We have to choose our methods very wisely and use the word, “no” more often than we would like. Anytime I come across a complex worfklow or best practice, I know “analog” thinking is to blame and people were not thinking holistically. Siloed analog approaches just don’t work in the digital realm, they don’t leverage the efficiencies of technology and they don’t take into account exactly how much content is being created every day and what it’s going to take to mange that glut of information.

Digital Asset Managers understand how to leverage data across disparate databases, rather than the old analog method of using repetition and making copies (silos) to keep information together and create relationships (i.e. the carbon copy). The result of analog-ist thinking will often lead to an unfathomable amount of backlog and digital paperwork, because the workflow/standard they created would only be achievable if you had an army at your disposal. To me this poor judgment is not “job security”, as I’ve heard far too often, its analog-ist insecurity. These types of judgment calls are the result of not understanding at the conceptual core, what technology allows us to do and what it requires in return.

To describe how managing digital information differs from the analog world. I often use my Greek Vase analogy. Let’s say you have a Greek Vase, an actual physical 3-D object, this vase is not going to replicate itself right before your eyes hundreds of times, that digital file on the other hand, will do it in a heartbeat. Therefore working with digital resources requires a completely different shift in thinking and practices that worked great for managing analog materials, just won’t scale when moved to the digital realm.

It’s about focusing on retaining what’s really, really, important and the most appropriate place for those resources. For example, objects should go in a collections management system (glass and film negatives are objects too), and digital assets should be managed in a DAM. Both can have different metadata schemas, but they might also share some common elements (Title, description, keywords etc). You don’t have to repeat content or information in both systems, you can just have the systems talk to one another. You can focus on master assets in the DAM and original objects in the collections management system. You also don’t need to create/upload thumbnails or web-ready assets in your DAM as it should create them automatically. In an analog world this was not possible, if you wanted a smaller copy of something you had to physically make it and then save that as you didn’t want to have to make that same thing manually every single time.

If you don’t think about scalability when choosing what to digital assets to keep, the management of those resources over time, formatting, migrations etc. you will quickly end up with more process and less product over time. In the end it really comes down to quantity and resources, like with the Greek Vase analogy. You may only ever have the one object, but over time you will have many surrogate digital representations of that object. You cannot think about managing digital files the same way you did with analog materials, there is just too much of it. In an ideal world we would have lots and lots of everything and lots and lots of information about everything, but that’s unrealistic and unless you have the manpower of Google to process all of it, it’s just not going to happen. Therefore you must be judicious in the execution of your scope, use the right tools for the job, think holistically and don’t over complicate.

Panels are such a great way to introduce a topic as well as allowing experts to do what they do best, which is talk freely about their expertise. Therefore, I thought some of you might be interested in reading my moderator transcript and to possibly help inspire you to create a your own panel event.

The questions I proposed were general as a means to stir conversation and to introduce the practice of DAM.

The participants included: Henrik de Gyor, Chad Beer and Tony Gill. I would like to think them again virtually for being such a great panel and especially to Tony Gill who filled-in a vacancy about 2-hours before my panel started. You’re a star! My only regret from the panel is that I did not record the responses, sorry readers!

Panel Transcript:

The first set of questions are going to address What DAM is, what it isn’t, why you need it and the types of professionals that play a role in DAM.

• DAM is about helping users to find meaningful and relevant information in amongst the noise.
  
  Q. How do you introduce the topic of Digital Asset Management to those who are hearing about it for the first time?

• One of the recurring conversations I have with those new to DAM scape is explaining the difference between business process of DAM and the technology of DAM. As there is so much focus on purchasing technology that often times, process gets lots in the shuffle. Paul Nicholson, VP of Print and broadcast production at Showtime said “People think that buying a tool will do it for them, but it wont. You have to have sound processes to start with”.
  
  Q. How do you explain the difference between digital asset management as a practice and the technology that goes with DAM and how do you keep process in balance with technology decisions?

• One of the aspects I enjoy most about Digital Asset Management is it is extremely cross-disciplinary and it allows me to collaborate different types of professionals. Collaboration and cross-disciplinary practitioners are essential to the implementation of DAM.
  
  Q. So who are these folks and what types of skills are important to a successful Digital Asset Management strategy?

Now that we’ve covered some of the basics let’s discuss a bit about the users role in DAM. Central to any Digital Asset Management strategy is the end-user. Usability is an important aspect of Digital Asset Management and the role that user-acceptance plays an integral part in any DAM strategy.

• A major aspect of user acceptance is training, and we have a lot of new tools at our disposal to enable us to reach users more effectively, for instance we can leveraging social media technologies like user forums, pod-casting and screen-casting.
  
  Q. So, what are some of the ways you reach out, to educate and train users?

• Some of the other main elements are more on the system side such as interface design, findability and front-end information architecture, metadata compliance with Dublin core, flexibility and scalability.
  
  Q. What are some of the core elements you feel are necessary to gain user acceptance with DAM?

• Another aspect of working with users is the challenge of keeping it simple! Ray Ozzie, Former (as of about three days ago) Chief Software architect at Microsoft said it best “Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers and IT and constrains the ability of an organization to progress”. It’s always amazing to me how quickly complexities can arise in the development of a digital asset management strategy.
  
  Q. What are some of your strategies for getting down to the bare-bones needs and keeping it simple?

• Another topic that comes up often at Digital Asset Management conferences is change management. One of the great things about being a Digital Asset Manager is the possibilities you bring to the table have the potential to rewrite and shape how an organization exchanges knowledge. On the other side of that is that there is safety in the sameness as it doesn’t require change, but it also doesn’t manifest anything very remarkable. Implementing DAM or any technology for that matter, can be good kind of disruption, as it challenges relationships and forces new thought patterns. So I like to think of DAM as a high impact sport as change plays such a central role.
  
  Q. How do you facilitate and manage change in organizations, especially changes that are very personal to users such as workflow.

Also greatly effecting end-users is the pace of changing technologies, but it also plays a role in shaping the DAM profession..

DAM keeps me on my toes as the knowledge management industry overall is always dynamically evolving and changing. The ability to be Forward-thinking is a requirement and because of this we are often out there on the “bleeding-edge” and anytime you’re that far out there the reality of the “Oops” isn’t far behind. To be successful in this field you have to be comfortable with with pushing the envelope and making mistakes as long as you learn from them.

• The tolerance for honest failure is a rule of the trade that Silicon Valley and shall I say our own Silicon Alley knows well. Examining failure and its link to creativity and technological successes is gaining a lot of attention. National Geographic right now has a short Documentary featuring Honda called “Failure: The Secret to Success” and just yesterday the San Francisco Chronicle covered FailCon 2010 which trains executives to embrace failure. The byline caught my attention because it stated if you want to be successful “you should study failure – because ‘oops’ is the mantra of champions”. In DAM knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what to do.
  
  Q. How does learning from past failures play a role in your approach to DAM?

• Another part of working in this large, quickly moving, landscape of knowledge management is that it requires the professional to have an insatiable appetite for learning. It’s one of those just when you think you’ve caught up something new comes along and changes your mind. For example for some time I was on the fence with RAW vs. DNG file formats then along came the DP Best Flow report by the Library of Congress and American Society of Media Photographers, they made a persuasive argument with supporting DNG as a master negative file vs. the very proprietary RAW. Finally, I could get off the fence. However, as digital asset managers we often find ourselves on these fences.
  
  Q. How do you keep pace with the world of DAM?

The conference overall was one of the best “professional” conferences I have ever been to. However, we all drink the same Kool-aid (a more in-depth discussion about this drinking problem coming in a future post). The conference was incestuous. Mostly all attendees were already well established DAM professionals (ie. Speakers) or Vendors. I think I met only one non-DAM inductee.

So what’s the point of the valuable message that was being given if no one but your peers is around to hear it? Yes, they might gain valuable insight as I did, but isn’t it also possible to both help your peers and help others outside the realm of DAM?

To do this, information has to be accessible. We of all people (DAM professionals) should understand this. However, these conferences are not accessible. Most folks are struggling just to implement DAM in their organization, let alone convincing their superiors that they also must attend a conference with a high ticket price. I wont even get into how much KM world costs to attend (Taxonomy Bootcamp included). One of my coworkers is currently in the process of writing, filling out forms, meeting with people, convincing others all just to be able to go to KM World.

Also, the professional classes, some lasting only a few days, often cost just as much to attend as a upper tier university course for a full semester and you don’t even get academic credits. I’m sure the classes are great, but only those with corporate backing can afford to attend. In my opinion they aren’t the ones that need the most help. Cultural heritage orgs right now are in the most crisis in terms of handling digital information, there are very few of them than can afford to even staff a full-time DAM person let alone, pay to educate them. For me, that does not sound accessible, just L33t (“leet” as in elite) as my hacker friends would say.

I write and talk about getting out of professional silos as much as possible. I do this mostly to bring awareness to the problem of silos and to help others recognize and hopefully recover from them. People don’t know what DAM is unless they are involved in the profession. They really don’t have a clue, even when it is explained to them. Even people who are “involved” don’t really get it. I’ve seen more poorly implemented DAM solutions than I have seen good ones. They can’t afford to take the classes or attend the professional conferences. Sure they can go to websites and browse for articles, but the really good ones are kept behind locked doors. I understand the need to make money, but there also has to be some level of give and take or our professional will continue to remain in the shadows. People will never adopt a standard if it’s not accessible. We are on the path to, and are already creating our own silos, they very thing we set out to prevent with information.

What can we do about it?
For starters, we can stop just talking to each other and start talking to people not in the “know”. Talk to creatives, developers, art directors, technology folks etc. Also, stop this silly process of hording all the “good” stuff (information) by putting a huge price tag on it, both with our documentation and our conferences. If people know stuff your job is not going to end its actually going to only get better. More DAM projects might be given a better chance at success if more people understand what the hell it is your actually doing over there in that cubicle. The more folks are educated about DAM, they more they will see the relevance of it to the organization. If you’re really lucky you might even get some more resources thrown at your project.

What can you do?
Join and participate (yes, they are two different things) in groups like the DAM Foundation and your local DAM Meetup group. Groups like these are trying to standardize and strengthen the field by sharing information and empowering individuals.

Most good DAM professionals are strategic thinkers and can see the big picture when others cannot, making for a pretty lonely career path. However, reaching out to both your profession and becoming more cross-disciplinary can help. Think outside the box and try and bring your message to those outside your profession. If they won’t listen to you, bring in a few folks and make the panel talks an “event”. Empower your organization by having a panel of experts come in. Don’t do a boring “ “death by deck” presentation, but instead just talk off-the-cuff about the practice of DAM and answer questions. In short, really talk about your topic and show others what you know. You don’t have to have all the answers, but the answers you do have are valuable.

Overall, remember outreach is important in an emerging profession. Don’t horde knowledge, it’s not going to help you or anyone else.The best advice is the advice that is given for free, with no strings attached. It’s fair to charge for services rendered, but don’t forget to share what you learn with others and give a little back to the community. Remember, there are a lot of lost folks out there and it’s within our power to help them.

Many institutions who have systems that were implemented over 4 years ago are now facing the challenges of an over-accumulation of content, poorly defined DAM scopes and ones that are no longer meeting the needs of the staff. First and foremost DAM systems should be a means to efficiently and effectively transmit ‘valuable’ and high-use assets throughout an organization. Some of these complications arose out of the transition from analog to digital with no change in staffing. Old staff were just ‘transitioned’ into working in the digital realm without any real training or professional development requirements. The skills used in managing analog materials were not the same as those necessary for the effective management and creation of digital materials. Analog workflows do not cleanly transition into digital ones, nor should they, there are better ways of doing things now. So many institutions had to ‘make-do’ as there were no other options that didn’t involve sweeping the human resource slate clean and starting over again.

Digital asset management is not just the system (i.e The DAM), but a combination of content management related professional disciplines. These disciplines include, but are not limited to: business management, information architecture, library and information science, software engineering/development, content creation and publications development. So who or what are these most integral roles at the bare minimum of the resource chain to make a DAM project successful? What follows is a summary of 4 essential DAM roles, some of which originate from the epic work The Content Management Bible by Bob Boiko. However, many folks will never get around to reading this most essential work, so I’ve made it easier for you. If you don’t have at least these three roles present in a dedicated DAM team, you’re not doing it right.

Business Analyst:
They need to fully understand the discipline, concepts and execution of digital asset management. They are the business representative for the digital asset management project to the rest of the organization and the outside world. They understand how digital asset management fits into the overall strategy of the institution. The business analyst will negotiate support and cooperation from the institution in regard to digital asset management initiatives on behalf of the DAM team. They perform business analytics on all processes and workflows that are effected by digital asset management. They will then help the team to apply these analytics to the creation of new processes and workflows to meet organizational needs.

Content Analyst:
They need to gather content requirements and determine the value of assets to be managed in the DAM. They create standardization documentation for polices surrounding the cataloging and management of rich media assets. Design the framework for the architecture of the information (metadata schemas, folder architecture). They will need to establish a asset lifecycle schedule from the birth or creation of digital assets to their retirement. They will need to have a strong background in cataloging and standardization skills. The content analyst determines project plans for the ingestion of new rich media into the DAM system, workflows and surrounding processes. In leaner times the content analyst also performs the role of a content metator for the DAM (digital librarian). This entails the review of incoming assets to make sure they adhere to written standards, add metadata where needed, perform training in all aspects of DAM (end-user to admistrator). Information Science professionals are often ideal candidates as content analysts, however not all library science professionals are good fits for the role. The library and information science professional should be well rounded and come from various environments (for-profit and not-for-profit), have experience in working with digital creative agencies and in more traditional archives.

Rights & Usage Analyst:
The focus of digital asset management is on the distribution of valuable assets both within and outside the organization. The rights and usage expert will evaluate the the organizations rights and usage approach and workflow. They will streamline the distribution process of assets both within and outside the organization, standardize the rights associated with assets, and increase the amount of assets available for use. They will work closely with the Digital Asset Manager/content Analyst to asses the collection based on rights and usage. They will have advanced experience with creative commons, PLUS and other rights management initiatives, workflows and tools.

Programmer/Developer:
This person will implement necessary changes, enhancements and extensions to the digital asset management system or chose the development environment for new DAM projects. They are able to automate acquisition routines, create and run system diagnostics and provide system intelligence to the DAM team. They have expertise in database and XML technologies. They need to be a SQL ninja as some DAM systems do not provide an easy front-end for doing analytics.

Along with these four roles you may have some borrowed talent such as a administrators, project managers, usability/user-experience professionals, production mangers or even a CIO. Some of the roles above may even overlap into a general Digital Asset Manager role depending on the project. In the short run if you do not have at least these 4 professional roles (this does not mean you can lump them all into one person), your DAM might survive, but its success over time depends with the inclusion of these individual professionals in your project budget. If you want more on this topic as I have really glazed over what takes many pages to describe into a few short paragraphs please read The Content Management Bible by Bob Boiko, specifically chapters 12-14 and 33. In short, Digital Asset Management is too big to saddle on the shoulders of any one person and requires at minimum a team of 4 dedicated, experienced professionals to be effective.

I think about 90% of those working with cultural institution collections don’t really understand the difference between a digital asset management system (DAM) and a collections management system or even what a content management system is (CMS). Take a look at this chart to understand just how much I am going to simplify the very complex topic of content technologies for your reading enjoyment. I also believe there are people out there that can explain it a lot better than me, but no one really has (yet) in any succinct, oversimplified and layman way. So here I go jumping off into what is really a super, messy, overlapping sea of applications that make up only part of content technologies. I’m going to focus on the difference between a digital asset management system (DAM) and a collections management system, I’ve thrown in content management (CMS), specifically web CMS for good measure. Anytime you try to wrap something up in a tiny package, you are bound to overgeneralize. However, I think the risk of over generalization is worth the price in the hopes that out there to get an inkling of an idea about what makes these systems different. You may also realize after reading this, that what you thought you needed might not be really what you need. You may also realize there are some serious gray areas and some systems overlap in scope and try to be all things to all people. Also, remember content technologies are applications that help you mange information, however if you do not also put the business practices and workflows around those applications to make them successful all you will be managing (or not) is your bottom line. At the end of the day content management is not just installing an application, its something that changes the business practices and workflows of the entire organization for the better (albeit a very painful change to some). Now to the “what’s the big diff?” part of this.

I will first try to explain the difference by using a stimulating example…

Idealized, fantasy-land, super simplified museum example:
For each object you have the object itself and any number of digital representations attached to that object. The Collections Management System (TMS, CollectiveACCESS, eMU) manages information about the “object” and associated metadata (CCO, CDWA, VRA). All of the images that depict this awesome object are stored in the DAM system which gets its own little set of metadata (Dublin Core, XMP/IPTC). This metadata however relates to the digital representation of the object and should be much more minimal than what you are storing in the collections management system. Some of this metadata is shared between both the collections management system and the DAM, but not all of it is in both. Each system has their own specific types of metadata. This sharing can even include the collections management system linking to the images in the DAM and not just data and vice versa (data to the images). Then you have the museum website, which stores all the website content in the content management system (CMS). Drupal is an example of a web CMS*. The CMS system is the back-end to the website it keeps all our information nice and tidy and enable a non-tech savvy person to create and edit content, manage users etc. It also manages the navigation, webpages, content (among lots of other things). For example to display the museum collections online Drupal “talks” to both the DAM (where it gets the object images) and the collections management system (for object data) and displays them online in a very pleasing manner (again, ideally). Through APIs all these disparate systems talk to one another delivering content where needed/requested.

*The CMS system type referenced above is a web focused CMSs – there are other kinds such as enterprise cms systems which focus on documents, details, and records related to the organizational processes of an enterprise. Get it?

Now for the breakdown…

DAM:
Digital asset management is all about the digital. The focus here is on access and retrieval. These systems fit well into busy production environments. The DAM system in a museum for example, would contain both object images as well as administrative images (museum interiors, gallery shots) as well as merchandising assets (product imagery, catalog layouts .indd files). Just in the type of content stored, you see how the DAM differs from a collections management system. The DAM is a hub for all the creatives (designers, photographers) to get to their assets, move them around and work with them. Its a dissemination platform, it gets that file from point A to point B quickly. It’s also the system that is the source for images delivered to the web. The DAM creates a centralized area for users to access assets. The assets that go into the DAM should be assets where the amount of resources required in managing them is equal to the need/demand for them. When low on resources, the assets that make their way into your DAM, should be your Rock Stars. These assets should be ones that are output agonostic (print, web) and the most flexible medium. Sometimes workflow systems are built upon DAM systems, enabling enterprises/institutions to fulfill requests for images in scenarios where the requestee does not have access. This can also include workflow systems that come from the content creators (photography studios and graphic designers) enabling them to get assets into the system efficiently and in a consistent way.

CMS
CMS covers a lot of territory so we going to speak in terms of a web CMS. A web CMS, enables the management of different types of web content. It basically helps users with no technical knowledge to easily create and edit content that is delivered onto the web. Examples of popular web CMS systems include: Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. Wikipedia explains it pretty succinctly here, so I’m not going to waste too much space on it. Now, Enterprise CMS is a bit different. Again, Wikipedia does a good job at explaining that as well here.
There is a world of CMS systems to navigate through, its pretty impossible to be an expert in them all.

Collections Management Systems:
As stated above, the Collections Management System (TMS, CollectiveACCESS, eMU) manages information about the “object” and associated metadata (CCO, CDWA, VRA). Interestingly enough, even Wikipedia doesn’t want to touch this application type by providing us with a nice definition. Objects/artifacts can be anything tangible 3D, 2D or born digital objects(!). Notice the different use of the words “object” and “assets”. When we talk collections management we are talking about “objects”. When we talk about DAM we are talking about “assets”. You would store information about objects in a collections management system when you need to record information about the original object itself such as: provenance, bibliographic references, constituents and conservation information. Basically, lots of complex and extensive data about an object goes into a collections management system and a DAM is where you place information specific to a digital asset. Hopefully, you are starting to understand that a collections management system is really good at storing text based information about “objects”. Now, sometimes you can *use* a DAM as a collections management system. However, I will warn you that this really just muddles the waters between information about the digital asset and object information. This is explained in more detail in the next section.

DAMs and Collections Management Systems:
Why even separate the two, you might ask? Well, in the case where you have extensive amounts object information (i.e museums/archives). You do not want to store this same information with every single instance of the digital asset and vice-versa. Mainly because that digital asset itself has all kinds of its own metadata (technical and administrative) associated with it such as: how the digital image was captured, who did the capturing, usage parameters, rights etc. Digital assets also have life-cycles and a DAM makes this process more efficient. You can setup triggers to retire certain images when usage rights run out or when an asset has ceased from popular use. Information about the digital asset is specific to the asset. So in short, you want one container to manage everything about the object. While you use the other (DAM) to keep track of all the digital representations and their complicated life-cycles.

What about “Born-Digital” for cultural instituions?
Yes, things can get even more complicated. In other industries most of your content is “born-digital” (advertising design, web design etc) as these materials began as digital files. For cultural institutions however, born digital is where it gets interesting/complicated (warning: gray area). The “object” information approach can apply to born digital items when you need to store more information about the item that would be outside the scope of a DAM or when it would require the replication of too much data associated with each individual object. In other words you could treat the born-digital like an “object”. I would use the DAM to manage the original digital file without trying to duplicate to much “object” specific information, as that’s the duty of the collections management system. Just enough to make it findable in the DAM. All this while trying to keep the types of information/metadata stored specific to the application solution. Metadata about the born-digital object itself in the collections management system and asset specific metadata in the DAM (where it belongs). Sometimes if your a purely digital archive/collection, you might be able to skip the collections management solution, provided your not going to wind up with 400 metadata fields attached to one asset with lots of duplication of the same information across namespaces.

In reality, there are a ton of gray areas and endless ways to marry these systems together and some systems even overlap. This is hard, complex stuff and people spend a lot of time trying to figure it all out. Consultants get paid lots of money to provide solutions to all complexities involved with collections/content management. Its hard to wrap-it up in a tiny nutshell without going off on a tangent about one particular aspect or changing my mind all together in the middle of the thought (post). The important part is understanding what your REAL needs are and which system will allow you meet these needs in the most pragmatic, efficient, cost-effective way possible.

Here’s some more where that came from:

DAM vs. WCM – do you really understand the difference?
DAM Talk: Scott Seebass CEO Xinet Webnative DAM
What’s the DAM Difference?: Content Management’s Best Tool is Digital Asset Management