How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does the Air Force use Digital Asset Management?
How do you get unstructured assets under control?
How did you develop new metadata panels for use with the Adobe Creative Suite?
What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Cynthia Hilsinger.
Cynthia, how are you? Cynthia Hilsinger: [0:10] I’m just fine, Henrik. Henrik: [0:12] Great. Cynthia, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Cynthia: [0:14] I manage a series of files, images, et cetera, about a terabyte, at
Headquarters Air Force Information Media Management and Graphics. Henrik: [0:25] Great. How does the Air Force use Digital Asset Management? Cynthia: [0:28] The Air Force uses Digital Asset Management to control its
unstructured assets. These unstructured assets are kept for remanipulation and
repurposing. Information requests come in for the Air Force. We can pull that
information quickly, serve it up to our customers. [0:48] It all becomes part of
telling the Air Force story. This is what we do and having those assets handy,
findable, discoverable, ready to be pulled, served up, made into a product that
can be consumed by the customer or the public, that’s an important storytelling
point for us and our office. Henrik: [1:10] How do you get unstructured assets under control? Cynthia: [1:13] One, you have to deal with people and personalities first, content
makers. That was the most difficult item for me. Making sure people understand
that data is a corporate asset, and it has a very real value, and having
them understand that. Henrik: [1:36] How do you develop new metadata panels for use with the
Adobe Creative Suite? Cynthia: [1:42] We were given new governance that we were required to
add a VIRIN number to our Creative Suite files. We use a lot of Illustrator and
Photoshop. In the military, in the DoD in particular, we have what’s called
a VIRIN number. It’s the Visual Information Record Identification Number.
Currently, there was no way to add that VIRIN number into the metadata panel.
The practice had been to rename a file and give it this long VIRIN number. [2:15]
To give you a sample of what a VIRIN number is, think of your car VIN number,
the Vehicle Identification Number, which is a very long number. We have this
very long VIRIN number, important because each data asset, each visual information
product has its own individual VIRIN number. It’s almost like a thumbprint.
How are we going to add that without changing a lot of file names to a
hard to remember VIRIN number?
[2:47] When I was looking at the metadata panels that come incorporated with
Adobe Creative Suite, I realized that they were powered by XMP. I contacted
that company and tried to develop some way to add that information in and
change those panels around. After some time, they said, “Well, you know, it’s a
little bit difficult. We had a few requests from other people in the military wanting
the same item.” So it was a common pain point for everyone in the DoD.
[3:24] I brought it forward to Defense Media Activity, and between developers,
Pound Hill, and Adobe, and Defense Media Activity, and understand, trying to
get the government from many different arms. Defense Media Activity said,
“Well, let us massage this a bit.” And I was keeping the communication lines
open, adding some insight on how we were developing things in our name
schema, and I wanted to keep the file name the same.
[3:55] Well, everybody signed off. Adobe said, “Not a problem.” DMA said,
“We’ll host this. It can be found on a DoD website free to the government
users.” Now we can open up a metadata panel that is named for us. It’s a metadata
panel, and that allows us now to keep the file name the same and add
metadata in the appropriate places and makes a smooth transition.
[4:31] My goal was to make each file smarter. With everyone’s cooperation, it all
came together. So now we have a new metadata panel that can be inserted into
our Adobe software, and Adobe is thrilled with it. They’re out saying to their
federal customers, “Hey, look what we have. Please use that.” Federal users
they’re happy, since they don’t have to go some other place. Henrik: [4:59] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become data professionals? Cynthia: [5:05] I would say to begin with, when you come into any organization,
take a survey of the work processes there, and take the survey of all the data
that is in-house. Learn how your office is ingesting data, how it is being moved
throughout the office, and its work processes how it is being made, held,
and kept.
[5:29] Once you have a baseline of what is and when you know what you’re
currently doing and how to do it, getting a DAM system or building a DAM
system and having metrics is quite critically important. That takes a fair amount
of time to understand, so that’s a first critical step. After you know what your
processes are, the next item that I would say to young DAM professionals is get
a naming system.
[6:02] Make sure that you have a schema for how things are organized. Get a
naming system, making sure that there are no blank spaces, no unusual characters
except hyphen and underscore. That way files become platform agnostic.
We use Macs in our office, but many people have PCs. That way they can be
sent across the Internet without adding extra characters.
[6:28] That would be step two. Naming conventions and getting an understanding
of what things are called, and making sure all files fit that naming convention
and that organizational schema. Step one, know your processes. Step two,
naming conventions and schema development. Henrik: [6:50] Excellent. Thank you so much, Cynthia. Cynthia: [6:52] Thank you very much for having me on your blogcast. Henrik: [6:56] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
What advice would you give to DAM Professionals or people aspiring to be a DAM Professional?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Heather Hedden.
Heather, how are you? Heather Hedden: [0:09] Fine, thanks. Thanks for inviting me. Henrik: [0:12] Heather, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Heather: [0:15] Actually I’m a taxonomist. That’s closely related. I create taxonomies
which are usually structured sets of terms used for metadata to tag or
classify content item. The content can be digital assets or text documents. I’m
involved in more than just Digital Asset Management as I see it. [0:36] I originally
got into the field from a background of indexing with a company that has now
become Cengage Learning, indexes, reference materials for libraries, magazine
and newspaper articles, pamphlets, maps, charts, and images too. I’ve worked
as a taxonomist in both full-time positions and as a consultant or contractor. I’m
in between jobs at the moment.
[1:03] My most recent job was as the taxonomy manager in a wind energy company
based in Boston. There I developed a better nested folder for the hierarchical
classification of content to better support browsing. I also developed
taxonomies with numerous synonyms for auto classification of content to better
support search.
[1:24] A third taxonomy project included metadata for manually tagging content
was also in the plans. Although many documents there were text files, they also
had CAD drawings, topographical maps, PowerPoint presentations, and image
files such as many photos of wind farm locations and wind turbines.
[1:46] The taxonomy covered lots of terms dealing with all these different documents,
technical, legal, financial, covering all areas of the business. I’ve also
been involved in developing policies or guidelines for tagging or classifying
content with a taxonomy which is an important component of taxonomy work. Henrik: [2:07] Heather, you recently wrote a book called “The Accidental Taxonomist.” What inspired you to write this book? Heather: [2:12] I’m glad you asked. I also teach a continuing education workshop.
It’s a five week workshop through Simmons College Graduate School
of Library and Information Science. It’s an introduction to taxonomy. I’ve been
doing that for a couple of years. [2:27] I got an inquiry if I would teach a second,
more advanced class. I just got to thinking about how much work that would be
because it’s ongoing every other month or something. Since I had accumulated
some other written materials and giving presentations, I thought maybe it would
better to put this all into a book that would serve both those at an introductory
level and at a more advanced level if you had a lot of material together.
[2:54] As a backup I had also been doing kind of freelance side work back to the
book indexing, writing indexes to nonfiction books. I’ve been reading a lot of
different nonfiction books, some of them professional books. I thought, “Well,
maybe I could write a book too.”
[3:11] I consider my background pretty comprehensive in both that I created
taxonomies used by human manual indexers, taggers, and those for auto classifications.
I’ve also created taxonomies for more commercial, published content
and those that are for internal enterprise content.
[3:34] With that kind of broad background I felt pretty qualified to write a book
on this. Some people have written book that are more narrow just for enterprise
taxonomy. When I looked around, there really wasn’t that much out there just on
taxonomy today.
[3:52] There’s another book that’s more on knowledge management or some
that are focused on controlled vocabularies more for wide learning focus areas.
It was a need that needed filling. Henrik: [4:05] Heather, is there a website where you can get more information
about this? Heather: [4:09] Oh yes. It’s www.accidentaltaxonomist.com which has a lot of
information about the book, the table of contents, the index, the introduction,
forward. It also has all the websites mentioned throughout the book, the URLs,
and they are hyperlinked. You can actually get a lot of information that I have in
my book without reading it, although I hope you do. Readers can go do that. Henrik: [4:41] What advice would you give to DAM professionals or people aspiring
to be a DAM professional? Heather: [4:47] Considering I’m a little bit on the sidelines of the DAM profession
myself being a taxonomist, I do see similarities there and I recommend this
for people going into taxonomy as well or other fields such as content management.
[5:01] It involves having more of a broader skill set and experience,
so combining a DAM background with, perhaps, taxonomy management or
content management experience or also indexing background that I have had
or experience with maybe search technologies or more of a technology background
and perhaps a subject area expertise, so something to some specialty
area to distinguish one’s self.
[5:38] Also, I think people should be open to any industry. You might think of
maybe traditional media based industries, but all kinds of companies, all kinds
of industries now have a growing core list of different types of assets. I never
thought I’d end up in the wind energy industry. Keep your eyes open to anything
and network a lot. Henrik: [6:04] Great idea. Thanks, Heather. Heather: [6:07] OK , you’re welcome. It was nice to talk to you. Henrik: [6:10] No problem. For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does taxonomy relate to Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to give to DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Seth Earley. Seth,
how are you? Seth Earley: [0:09] I am terrific. Thank you for having me. Henrik: [0:11] Great. Seth, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Seth: [0:15] Well, I’ll tell you. We have been doing work with Digital Asset
Management for probably the entire 15 years that I’ve been doing this kind of
work. I’ve been involved in content management, in document management, in
knowledge management for that period of time. Throughout the entire career,
we’ve always had to deal with nontextual assets. We’ve always had to deal with
some rich media. [0:40] I remember at the beginning when we were doing work
with Lotus Notes. The first time you could drop an image into a rich text field, I
was like, “Wow. This is so amazingly cool. I cannot believe you can drop a picture
into a rich text field.” Ever since then we’ve been dealing with digital assets
and Digital Asset Management Systems. Henrik: [1:02] Excellent. Seth, how does taxonomy relate to Digital Asset
Management? Seth: [1:13] You can infer something about text assets. You can derive something.
You can do text mining. There are is-ness and about-ness inherently
within the content. [1:20] When you build an index, when you’re doing search,
you’re searching text assets by inferring something about the nature of the
content. You can create a forward index by looking at the words in a document.
You invert that index, which gives you the pointers to specific documents
based on the words. And then, that’s derived metadata about the text, about
the document.
[1:43] You don’t have that ability to do that with any kind of Digital Asset
Management, with digital assets, with rich media, with images. There’s no inherent
is-ness or about-ness, so, of course, we have to use metadata.
[1:56] The way we look at metadata and taxonomy, taxonomy is really the way
of beginning to organize your metadata. We don’t look at taxonomy in a very
narrow sense of navigation. We look at taxonomy from a perspective of classification
and overall information architecture.
[2:15] When we start looking at taxonomy, we want to begin thinking about the
types of fields and the ways that we can start to tag the assets with metadata.
Then we want to populate those fields with reference data, with the drop downs,
with the controlled vocabularies, with the lists and attributes.
[2:36] Taxonomies are considered to be hierarchical in nature. We can certainly
have hierarchical lists of controlled values, but there’s all sorts of different ways
of looking at information architecture that references taxonomies. Taxonomies
are the overall organizing principles around your metadata fields.
[2:58] Of course, whenever you think about metadata, if you have a large list of
attributes or a large list of values, you have to break those up for human consumption.
We can only deal with fairly short lists, maybe 5, 10, or maybe 15
items. If you start to get into lists that are 100 terms long or 200 terms or 500
terms, how do you deal with that? Well, you have to break it up. That’s where
you have to use hierarchies.
[3:25] You can even think of metadata fields as the top-level terms of your hierarchy.
A doc type will be a top-level term of a hierarchy. Maybe an asset type
would be a top-level term, or maybe a channel, a region, a language, or any of
those other types of attributes. Those can all be considered top-level terms of
the taxonomy. Really, all of the metadata is an expression of the taxonomy. Henrik: [4:01] Makes complete sense. Seth, what advice would you give to DAM
professionals or people aspiring to be DAM professionals? Seth: [4:12] Well, I think the best advice that I can give would be to get experience,
even with projects that are nonprofit organizations or organizations
that don’t have a lot of money, so that you can build your skills. Get a broad
understanding of information architecture, including things like wire frame development,
metadata schemas, and taxonomy development. [4:41] Look at the
semantics of your structures, and try to understand a little bit about library
science. Library science is the core foundation for all of these organizing principles.
I heard someone recently say that a Digital Asset Management system is a
Metadata Management System that does fancy things. I totally agree with that.
[5:04] You really do need to understand metadata structures and metadata schemas,
and understand things like Dublin Core. Look at the different ways that you
can organize those assets using various types of technologies. Look at how the
various technologies leverage organizing principles and leverage information
architecture.
[5:28] I would get some very practical experience, though. Find a nonprofit organization
that doesn’t have a lot of resources, that would like to get your elbow
grease and your hard work to help them fix a system or help them organize their
assets. That’s a great way to build your resume.
[5:50] If you’re more experienced, definitely broaden your expertise by looking
at some training in library science and metadata schemas. Have a good, broad
understanding of the technologies. Henrik: [6:04] Great idea. Well, thanks, Seth. Seth: [6:07] Thank you. Henrik: [6:08] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 