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Blog about Digital Asset Management

Tag Archives: Digital Asset


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Where do you get your metadata?

In the past, I mentioned there were no ‘metadata fairies‘ that would come by and sprinkle the necessary metadata on your digital assets.

Some Digital Asset Management (DAM) vendors offer some auto-tagging or AI-assisted tagging technology for a first pass if provided the right metadata schemas, data models, and/or rules. But only a small percentage of DAM initiatives are finding that to be adequate for their needs and sufficient to how their users are searching for their said content.

Over the years I have done a fair amount of research and chose to write about how AI-assisted tagging might appear to be fast and a simple plug and play dream. However, the end results are not nearly as accurate nor as relevant to end-users as what is still achieved through the down and dirty curation by a DAM professional.

The users searching a DAM still need to find what they are looking for which still empowered by good metadata and taxonomy. To achieve this still requires heavy curation and validation by people, not machines. And AI technologies still require a lot of human assistance, train on good data models based on a company’s institutional knowledge to come close to the true metadata needs (not out of the box auto-tagging solutions which rarely help users).

So, what’s the answer for a DAM professional who has less time to devote to entering metadata? How does the DAM professional raise their heads above the amount of metadata with everything else needing to be done for ongoing success in their daily DAM day?

Think of those people who currently do the metatagging of all the digital media assets today, yet to be created and needing to be altered or updated? Where, physically, and who are those people within your company?

Being a DAM consultant and listening to many people over the years who are involved in the practice of ‘keeping the digital house in order’ with their DAM responsibilities, I have yet to find someone who loves to enter and fix metadata all DAM day. It still takes a DAM professional to enable this since relevant companies are not going to stop accumulating newly created or newly acquired digital assets. If companies were to no longer create, acquire, and use digital assets, those companies might cease to be relevant and then cease to exist altogether in the near future. And yes, the future will be more digital than we have now.

Now, let us refocus on people doing the metatagging of your digital assets. Where are those people within your company?

Is metadata still needed today? Absolutely. More than ever and this will all continue as marketers and the like are only creating more digital content.

DAM professionals have other things to do to manage your DAM operations. Why burden them with the task of doing all the metadata? Why not ask a group that does just that for your company?

Why not reach out to a group of professionals who specialize in this single and important aspect for any successful DAM.

Enter the metadata fairies.

Oh yes, there are metadata fairies that can and will do this work for you, your team, and your company. Introducing remote metadata services provided by My DAM Services.

My DAM Services features many metadata fairies providing you with remote metadata services.

Remote metadata services are not just technology. My DAM Services does not offer DAM technology, nor are we tied to any specific DAM vendors. This is a service, pure and simple, using people (lots of them if needed) whose only job is to apply, curate, plan, and take direction pertaining to your digital assets and generate quality results in tremendous volume.

Keep in mind that My DAM Services does not replace your Digital Asset Management professionals. My DAM Services augments DAM professionals by removing the burdening task of filling in metadata so they can check it before releasing those digital assets with metadata to your DAM end-user audience.

Curious? Visit mydamservices.com for more information

Contact them at solutions@mydamservices.com


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What is the life cycle of DAM assets?

Digital assets have a life cycle just like plants and animals. Your organization may acquire, create or even re-purpose digital assets which are:

  • a major milestone in the organization’s history
  • historical (good or bad)
  • required by law or other regulations
  • repeatedly used or requested

What are the signs that digital asset is coming to the end of its life cycle?

Is the asset:

  • Dated (is everyone wearing bell bottoms, plaid and have long sideburns? This could be a sign unless you are covering 1970 revivals)
  • Too generic? Or is it too specific to be of interest to your audience?
  • Antiquated (do you hear dinosaurs roaming or modems dialing for a connection? Or is an abacus the most advanced technology available?)
  • Not downloaded/ordered/requested/used in the past 5 years. (A DAM solution should be able to report the number of times an asset has been downloaded/ordered/requested/used. This is a major indicator.)

If the case is the asset has not been downloaded/ordered/requested/used in over 5 years, it may be time to migrate the asset to an archive outside of the DAM. Or maybe just keep a proxy of the asset in the DAM along with a location/contact for the archive that has a high quality copy of the digital asset. Just keep in mind not to delete all copies of those legacy digital asset  (you know, those assets supposedly at the end of their life cycle), unless required by law or regulation.

  • How many pieces of documentation do you keep for your assets? (This would explain the history and ownership of your digital assets, sometimes known as provenance)
  • How will this content be changed over the life cycle of the asset?
  • How many people do you have accessing this information? (History of the asset as seen from the DAM reports)
  • What is the total value of your asset related projects per year? (Do you keep in mind the value of these projects and assets?)
  • How many people can you afford to have managing this documentation? (This is documented in writing by someone, right?)
  • What happens when someone uses the wrong information? (Do you like errors and inconsistency?)
  • Is any of this a matter of proper version control? (Do you really want to know how many systems fail to have this today? Too many.)

If the digital asset is needed ‘forever,’ consider what file format it is kept in, since this format may not be supported ‘forever.’  These assets may need to be converted into different (more current) file formats. Refer to Another DAM podcast interview with Linda Tadic who speaks about this as well as the time frame to revisit these things.

Consider the same with physical media storage such the evolution of audio from wax cylinders to LPs (33.3 and 45) to 8 tracks to audio tapes to CDs… now on hard drives and portable MP3 players.

How many digital assets do you actively use today?

If you wanted to archive this music, what format do we store this for high quality, everyday listening, or did we all keep all formats/players? Not likely. While some purist may continue to play these antique tools of the past purely for nostalgic reasons, most of these formats do not keep these physically degrading/fading media formats. Instead, we keep the highest quality digital copy of important audio we need to keep. The ones of value. The digital asset.

Consider the same with the evolution of photography:

In less than 200 years, photography went from wet plates to large format to medium format to 35 mm celluloid film then to eventually digital capture. Digital camera sales have surpassed film camera sales for several years now. Some companies are re-purposing their photography infrastructure for something the market actually wants to buy today. Most photographers want to see their images now. Sometimes, even their subjects want to see their image now as well.

When it came to film photography, the photographer often used to hand off the (analog) film for processing and printing to a lab. With digital photography, the photographer often is the lab as well.

Like most digital assets…

We want them now. We may even need them now. For the projects at hand. For the time being.

Our attention span and patience for finite search results (to find the right asset) are constantly getting shorter. We are spoiled thanks to really good search engines and more importantly, their search results. Be sure your digital assets are not just searchable, but found when needed. If these assets can not be found in a DAM, their life cycle is quite limited. Be aware of how to find these digital assets again.

If you need vendor neutral assistance or advice on digital asset life cycles, let us know.

What is the life cycle of your digital assets?

 


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Have you audited your digital assets lately?

Auditing is not just for taxes or financial information. Whether you have a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution today or not, you can audit your digital assets.

Why audit your digital assets?

Some people fear the idea of an audit because of what it may uncover. I recommend embracing the idea of an audit as a good practice in the long term so issues get resolved instead of brushing them under the carpet. An audit can bring clarity about assets and around collections of digital assets to help make informed decisions about them. It also helps establish process, policy and precedence around managing digital assets.  Too often, digital assets just sit there as they remain:

  • undervalued (or not valued as true assets should be)
  • poorly used (used only once or remain unused)
  • unknown to many users who may need/want them
  • not found upon search

What are we auditing?

Start by deciding which perspective are you taking:

  • Financial (making/saving/accounting money. Avoiding financial liability)
  • Customer (or internal user/use cases)
  • Learning and Growth (improve or create value/KPI)
  • Legal (avoiding legal liability. This often relates to rights management as mentioned by Tracy Guza)
  • Process (before/after launch of DAM)
  • Technology (DAM and other tools)

What are the objectives?

  • Are you getting your house in order?
  • Finding digital assets? faster?
  • Finding/requesting/creating relevant metadata for these assets?
  • Creating use cases?
  • Documenting what you have as far as people, process and technology? (is it fragmented or simply non-existent?)
  • Finding the gaps? (Gap analysis: what you do not have, but need now)
  • Deduplication? (reducing duplicate assets)
  • Find a measure to inform about a particular ‘objective’
  • What are you starting with and what do you end up with?

Are these objectives SMART?

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Actionable
  • Realistic
  • Time Bound

How to do an internal audit of digital assets

  • Find out what you have
  • Where are the assets located now?
  • What format are they in? Do they need to be re-formatted?
  • Are these usable?
  • Are these assets:
    • A need
    • A want
    • A nice-to-have
    • Unusable
    • To be archived only
  • How many assets? (volume)
  • How big? (file size/storage needs/user needs)
  • What type of assets?

How to do an internal audit of the metadata for these digital assets

  • Track down any documentation available (make the connection between digital assets and (often) separate information about these assets is often a challenge for many organizations)
  • Do we have metadata for every asset?
  • Embedded vs. associated metadata
  • Does this metadata include:
    1. File attributes (file type/size/dimensions/resolution/frame rate)
    2. Content attributes (who/what/where/when)
    3. Rights attributes (can I use/reuse/repurpose the asset?)
  • If the digital asset was acquired externally:
    • Where from?
    • Are these licensed or owned?
  • If the digital asset was created internally:
    • Who requested it
    • Who created it
    • For which project?
  • Is all this metadata searchable?

How to do an internal audit of search for these digital assets

  • Survey your users
  • Are they finding what they need? Why not?
  • Does your solution have useable, user friendly search capability?
  • Is search powered by usable metadata in a usable format?
  • When you search, are the search results finite enough?
  • Can you filter the results?

How long will this audit take?

The time to conduct an audit will vary depending on the:

  • Plan of how and why the audit will be conducted
  • Amount of specific analysis and testing needed
  • Locations of your digital assets (Do you know where they are all hiding? Is it accessible)
  • Volume of digital asset (asset count, anyone?)
  • Format of digital assets (Is it usable and not an obsolete format, as mentioned by Linda Tadic)
  • Provenance of digital assets (What is the history of the asset?)
  • How much manual fixing (vs programmatic fixing)  is needed (in case you have a digital dumping ground)

Let us know when you are ready for some vendor neutral consulting on Digital Asset Management and assistance with conducting a digital asset audit within your company.

When was the last time you audited your digital assets?


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What does context have to do with DAM?


For the readers who have read my blog before, they have seen my writings on quite a few topics about Digital Asset Management (DAM). I mention Digital Asset Management in every place I can think of to reference with the acronym DAM.

Then, there are some people who have not read my blog…ok, maybe skimmed it…but did see the word DAM next to my name.

Recently, I was invited (by email) to present at an upcoming conference type event in [unnamed foreign country] to talk about DAM…to discuss hydropower,hydroelectricity and sustainable energy.

(sigh)

That is not my field of expertise. I talk about DAM, not DAM. Oh, wait. We need some context to clarify this now, do we not?

I will not be attending that particular conference. I respectfully declined the invitation. I also shared some context about DAM (Digital Asset Management) as I do regularly with my insights found on this blog, the weekly podcast series, the eBook and during the Digital Asset Management conferences.

DAM is green. Uh, not unless you configured the User Interface (UI) to be that color. Servers drain power (like a colander drains water) and servers need to be cooled to the Nth degree (also not too energy efficient unless the servers are located in some frozen region). You may have a DAM (Digital Asset Management) system powered by a DAM (the one with the reservoir, lake or river behind it), but not likely in too many areas.

DAM. No, I am not cursing nor swearing. Yet, I know a few people who manage a DAM for some churches. They can say DAM out loud. It is simply an acronym in the field of Digital Asset Management.  I have heard some people prefer saying “DAMS” or spelling out D. A.M.

That is not as fun.

Often, the user assigns context to the DAM assets when they use an asset.