How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an organization focused on the film industry use Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with 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 am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Jane Glicksman.
Jane, how are you? Jane Glicksman: [0:10] I am very well. How about yourself? Henrik: [0:12] Great. Jane, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Jane: [0:16] I manage the day-to-day operations of our DAM, which currently
contains about 75,000 rare films, stills and portraits, film posters, drawings and
other photographs documenting the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1927 to
the present. [0:32] I developed our metadata schema and data input guidelines.
In addition to overseeing all cataloging, I train the users to troubleshoot and
assist in finding and retrieving assets, and work on the ongoing development of
the digital repository.
[0:49] Right now, actually, we are doing quite a bit of troubleshooting, because
we are trying to install some hot fixes, and there is a lot of testing and QA in
managing of day-to-day DAMs. I oversaw the initial implementation of our DAM
in 2005 and have gone through two upgrades and a complete system migration
in 2009. Henrik: [1:11] How does an organization focused on the film industry use Digital
Asset Management? Jane: [1:17] The Academy is an honorary membership organization dedicated to
the advancement of the Art and Science of Motion Pictures. Our DAM supports
the Academy’s mission to preserve the history of motion pictures and to educate
the public about the art and science of moviemaking and also to inspire
film makers and the public through educational programs. [1:38] Our DAM provides
the content for screenings and exhibitions, lecture series, and other programs,
the website, and internally, for publicity and marketing, and of course,
the Academy Awards show. DAM is also available to film scholars, publishers,
students, and to the general public at our public access stations in the Margaret
Herrick Library. Henrik: [2:00] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Jane: [2:05] I would say hone your project management skills. Develop your
good listening skills and understand and expect that your DAM will evolve as it
becomes more integrated into different business areas in your institution and
anticipate the needs of your users, whose interaction will most definitely evolve
as well. [2:26] You’ll find that, at least I did anyway, in addition to project management
skills and an understanding of metadata, you’ll need to successfully
enlist others to foster collaboration between teams to improve systems and to
demonstrate the value of DAM.
[2:41] Socializing and maintaining DAM and providing value is an ongoing process.
It’s incumbent upon anybody whose managing DAM to really understand
the technology of the product. You may not be an engineer or a programmer,
but I think that you really should understand how things work and how they’re
structured so that you can, first of all, choose a vendor that best suits your requirements
and also to manage the expectations of your users.
[3:09] People want everything. They want a system to do everything in the world,
and you are really there to manage their expectations and yet, provide as much
value as you can. Understanding every vendor has its limitations, every system
has its limitations, but knowing going in will at least allow you to develop something
that best suits your particular institution.
[3:35] I always hear about people talking about metadata, metadata search and
I think that’s really important, understanding your business and not trying to,
when it comes to metadata, force a schema on your business. You really have to
understand and be flexible.
[3:53] Also, be prepared to change things. If you are already using DAM, I think
you’ll find, as time goes by, that your needs change, your workflows change, and
hopefully that you’ll be flexible enough to meet those challenges, and hopefully
your vendor will be able to facilitate that. Henrik: [4:12] Thanks, Jane. Jane: [4:13] You’re very welcome. Henrik: [4:15] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments of questions,
please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does the world’s largest glass museum use Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Megan McGovern.
Megan, how are you? Megan McGovern: [0:09] I am very well, and yourself? Henrik: [0:10] Good. Megan, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Megan: [0:14] At the museum where I work, I am the system administrator for
our Digital Asset Management system. I set up templates and make all of the
configurations, and I was also involved in the purchasing, just not as a final
decision maker, but someone whose input was regarded. [0:29] I am also the
vendor liaison with our Digital Asset Management system. Past that, I am responsible
for assisting making policies regarding Digital Asset Management
practices what images are added to our system, what images might be weeded
out, retention schedules, things of that nature. I train all of the users on using
our system.
[0:49] Outside of my day-to-day work, I am the co-chair of the special interest
group for Digital Asset Management at MCN, which is the Museum Computer
Network. I’ve also spoken on panels in the MCN Conference, as well as the
AAM, which is the American Association of Museums Conference. Henrik: [1:07] How does the world’s largest glass museum use Digital Asset
Management? Megan: [1:11] We use Digital Asset Management all the time. It’s a very image
and video-centric world now, and we really saw the need, earlier in the 2000s,
to have a centralized location for our digital images. Silos are inefficient, so we
used Digital Asset Management as kind of our image library where, at a central
location, people, if they have a project, a lecture, a publication, an exhibition, or
just for reference, they can go to our system, search, and bring up the images
they need for their particular use. [1:40] We also have a direct feed between our
Digital Asset Management system and our website. Pictures that we store in our
system based on certain criteria, if they meet certain metadata values, they get
pushed out to the website and display to the whole world. It’s really a backbone
of our website along with our information and our various content management
systems with their databases.
[2:01] It’s really an important part of what we do, and we’re unique among museums
in that our asset management system doesn’t just have pictures of glass
objects as a glass museum, but we also have an extensive library, different
libraries on materials, design drawings, batch notebooks for recipes for making
glass, things like that.
[2:19] Then we also use our Digital Asset Management system for programs and
events photography. The VIPs visit, some millions visit our portraits of staff or
other people who come to lecture here, so we use it quite extensively. Henrik: [2:33] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Megan: [2:37] Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned working with Digital
Asset Management is, the field is really as much about people management and
change management as it is about asset management. Working with people to
set up preferences for the system and customizations. [2:53] Working change
managements, if you’re actually installing a new Digital Asset Management
system or one hasn’t existed before, getting input, having people trained and
feeling comfortable and feeling like they have a voice in how the system is
run, so that they’ll actually use it and the project will be a success. I think that’s
almost as important as knowing about metadata and download and technical
specifications for images.
[3:16] I also found that my library and information science background was very
helpful, knowing about the history of cataloging and the whys and wherefores,
how libraries set up information management in the era before computers. It
helps to see how information might be structured even for things that might
generally be considered unstructured information, like candid photos of children
making glass, things of that nature.
[3:39] That being said, I’ve also found that some IT knowledge is very useful,
especially, just a small background. Even a basic knowledge of SQL is sometimes
very useful in understanding how the back end of the Digital Asset
Management system, the database, works and operates.
[3:53] Past that, I would just say flexibility is key. The Digital Asset Management
system market, it seems to be always in flux and technology, as we all know, is
ever progressing and evolving. Being able to be flexible and change as times
change and the environment changes seems to be the key to success, at least in
my experience. Henrik: [4:13] Great advice. Thanks, Megan. Megan: [4:15] You’re very welcome. Henrik: [4:17] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a publisher of children’s magazines, stories and activity books use Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with George Brown.
George, how are you? George Brown: [0:09] Great. Thanks for having me. Henrik: [0:11] No problem. George, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? George: [0:15] Henrik, I’m a member of our publishing technologies team with
the editorial product development group for Highlights for Children. That team
includes our premedia production, our archiving, our rights management, and
our asset management. We’re currently in the middle of two implementations at
one time. [0:36] We’re doing a new DAM, an upgrade, as well as implementing
an editorial publishing system to help track our workflow as we’re building these
magazines, books, and various other digital products. So in my normal day job,
I manage our assets services team. There’s four of us. There’s a rights management
administrator, our archivist, and a content management specialist. So our
archivist is working with the premedia team in advance of a product to set up
folder structures and file naming conventions.
[1:15] Then that way the files are put into the right setup so that, when it is time
to archive them, we have them ready to go in the right condition that we need
them for archive and reuse. Our rights management administrator is tracking
all of the rights for content that we’re acquiring as well as content that we are
licensing out to various partners. Anytime we reuse content, she helps us check
those rights.
[1:43] Our content management specialist is really working within the DAM, and
right now a couple of other databases, to help our internal users here in the
editorial group as well as our business team in our Columbus, Ohio offices, and
then our various international and domestic licensing partners. Anytime there’s a
request to reuse content, it comes through our group, and our content management
specialist pulls those assets together for that request.
[2:17] Now we archive everything in a nice orderly fashion, but reuse is not
always nice and orderly. They may need a couple of pages from this book, a
couple of pages from this magazine, and maybe a few puzzles from some other
place. So our content management specialist is working with these people
within the DAM pulling those assets out and actually putting them together for
new use purposes. So he does a variety of packaging and repackaging to give
the right assets in the right format to what we call our customers, whether internal
or external.
[2:54] Now, the other part of my job right now is on the DAM implementation.
I’ve been working with our vendor to look at our assets and the metadata we
have, and figure out how we’re getting the assets ingested, and then the metadata
from another system attached to the appropriate assets. We’ve really
been fortunate with our DAM implementation in that our Director of Publishing
Technologies, who is my boss, has a wide experience in the DAM space.
[3:25] He’s done a number of DAM implementations through a few different
organizations. So he’s able to bring to our organization this deep understanding
of what it means to go through a DAM implementation starting with the requirements
gathering, then onto the vendor selection, the contract negotiation and
now, here we are in the heart of the implementation phase.
[3:52] Having Joe, who understands all of these pieces, is really helping us as an
organization hit the ground running with our DAM implementation. Henrik: [4:01] How does a publisher of children’s magazine stories and activity
books use Digital Asset Management? George: [4:07] It’s interesting. We’re a 65 year old company, and a lot of us remember
us as a magazine company. “Oh, I remember ‘Highlights’ from when I
was a kid.” We’ve always collected and looked at the importance of asset management
before they were digital assets. It used to be up in our attic, and now
we’ve sent these off to various storage places. [4:33] But we’ve always collected
our backup, our archival materials, photos, and our art. As time progresses, we
went from film to digital in the late ‘90s. We’ve expanded our business to be
more than a magazine with books, activities, partners that are doing different licensing,
and international partners. We’ve had more and more need to get back
into that archive to find our content and reuse it.
[5:05] First off, our Digital Asset Management is for accessing the archive and
gaining those assets that we need for reuse. Also, for research purposes, our
editorial group is very thoughtful about the content they make, and they’re
often looking back at what we’ve done in the past to help them think about
what they might like to make going forward. We also use our asset management
in the current production process, for storing our unpublished assets and being
able to search and find those assets quickly.
[5:45] We’ve been doing this with a FileMaker database and a lightweight DAM.
It’s kind of like you have to go to our FileMaker database to find the metadata,
the record information. Then match that up with a picture of it, from the lightweight
DAM. Our new DAM implementation, with the EnterMedia software, is
going to bring those two pieces together. So it should be one environment for
our users to be able to search and find what they’re looking for. Henrik: [6:19] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? George: [6:24] It’s fascinating, Henrik. I love the DAM field. I fell into it accidentally.
People I’ve met at various trade shows seem to have come about it the
same way. I was working on a project to create a summer magazine of activities,
stories and puzzles about some fun summer activities for kids. My colleague
and I, as we were working on this, were flipping through printed back issues
of the magazine. [6:55] And started thinking about, “Isn’t there a better way to
find this stuff? Imagine if we could just do like Google and search terms related
to summer to find this content?” That was really what got me started into the
DAM space. The more I get into it the more excited I get about how DAM can
be such a central piece to the publishing process and the content creation. If we
can help our end users, who are varied.
[7:28] They can be in the editorial group, the marketing group, our licensing
partners, or a whole variety of different customers. If we can help them find
our content, they can think of more and better ways to build products that are
meaningful to children, which helps fulfill our mission. As well as helps us continue
to grow as a media brand. Henrik: [7:55] It’s a very exciting field, indeed. Thank you so much, George. George: [7:58] Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity. Henrik: [8:02] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
In May 2012, the ISO released a new standard regarding a Digital Object Identifier system. Can you tell us more about this new standard you helped develop?
Now, DAM systems (among many other Enterprise Content Management solutions) often use various kinds of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or Unique Identifiers (UID). How is this standard applicable across organizations and vendors currently using DOI or UID for a variety digital media?
What advice would you like to share with 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 Norman Paskin.
Norman, how are you? Norman Paskin: [0:10] I am fine. Thank you, Henrik. Thank you for the invitation. Henrik: [0:13] Norman, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Norman: [0:15] I guess my principal involvement is, I manage something called
the DOI system DOI is “digital object identifier” run through an organization
specifically setup to do that, the International DOI Foundation, which I was
involved in founding and I’m currently managing. [0:33] The reason for that is,
if you’re managing digital assets, the first thing you need to do is to be able to
refer to each asset unambiguously and precisely using a short string. Give it an
identifier. That’s what the system was conceived to do back in 1998. It came
out of the publishing industry, but it was deliberately developed with wide
applicability.
[0:56] If I drill down a little bit into that involvement, I think there are three sorts
of involvement I have with DAM. The first is using identifiers on digital networks,
what we call resolution. The DOI system actually uses the Handle System. That’s
Handle.net from CNRI , which is the Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
I do work with them, just to be clear, on a consultancy basis.
[1:25] The Handle System was developed by Bob Kahn, who was one of the
co-inventors of TCP/IP to be highly scalable, efficient, extensible, secure and so
forth. It’s ideal for persistent identifiers and managing unique identifiers. That’s
the first area of involvement.
[1:45] The second involvement with DAM is associating descriptions with those
identifiers. For us at management, obviously it’s not sufficient to have an identifier,
you’ve also got to say what that identifier refers to precisely and unambiguously,
particularly if someone else is going to be using it. That takes us into the
world of metadata, particularly for intellectual property assets or what people
call content.
[2:15] I’ve been involved with a number of initiatives dealing with metadata for
enabling persistence and interoperability for well over 15 years. The first was
the INDECS project, 1998. That set the scene for a number of later initiatives.
The most recent of those just starting is something called the Linked Content
Coalition, run by the European Publishers Council.
[2:44] What these all have in common is recognizing that in the digital world,
convergence means you can be dealing with many different types of things, different
content from many different communities with different sets of standards.
They may not have previously had to work with each other, but they now need a
common framework. Norman: [3:03] Also, what’s come out of that, I think, is recognizing that assets
as intellectual property are much more than digital objects. For example,
Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” is more than an MP3 file. It’s an underlying abstraction,
a creation with all sorts of rights that may be different from the specific
digital manifestation. People have investments in all sorts of different data
schemes, so the aim has to be to enable people to reuse what they have. That’s
part of the effort that we’ve been involved in.
[3:35] One of the things that’s come out of that is something called the
Vocabulary Mapping Framework, VMF. A fundamental basis of things like that is
a structured ontology approach, the same principle as behind the semantic web
and link data. What we’re offering with DOI is a tool to give you a set of data
which is both curated and managed to be reliable.
[4:00] Just to wrap, the third way I’m involved is in social infrastructures and
governance. The DOI Foundation operates as a federation of independent
agencies. We have a governance model and a set of policies and procedures. It
works very well. We’re very pleased with progress, although sometimes it seems
like herding cats. We have agencies from a number of sectors US, Europe,
China, Japan so very different views coming forward.
[4:27] Also in the social infrastructure area, I’ve been involved in a number of
standards activities. Most recently, ISO 26324, which is an effort to take the DOI
system and put it into an ISO framework.
[4:40] Technical involvement in identifiers, metadata, and governance that’s my
involvement. Henrik: [4:46] In May, 2012, the ISO, or International Standards Organization,
released a new standard regarding a digital object identifier system. Can you
tell us more about this new standard you helped develop? Norman: [4:58] Yes. I was the convener of the working group that did that, but
the DOI system, which has now been standardized, actually preceded the ISO
working process itself. In fact, the ISO standard 26324 is codifying what already
existed. [5:16] In the early days of the DOI system, 1998, we worked with ISBN,
the International Standard Book Number people. Through them, we came to
the attention of the ISO group involved in that whole topic of bibliographic
identifiers. They invited us to consider taking the DOI system and putting it
into an ISO standard to gain the advantages of international recognition and a
degree of autonomy and independence.
[5:43] The system that’s now being standardized is, in effect, the DOI system
as it was. The DOI system really took off in 2000. ISO got involved in 2004, a
number of years later. It finally passed as a standard in 2010, quite a number
of years after that. It’s actually only been published now, in May, 2012. The
reason for that delay is purely an ISO thing. They wanted to review all of their
generic registration authority contracts. We got rather caught up in that whole
framework.
[6:18] Seven and a half years from door to door, but in effect what IS O has done
is taken the DOI system and put it into the ISO framework. There’s been a lot of
advantages to that, by the way, from our point of view. In the working group, we
had a number of suggestions for how to improve the wording, for how to consider
in particular interoperability with other standards, make sure that was fully
recognized in the wording, and avoid some initial misunderstandings, I think,
that were about. Norman: [6:47] Which was that in some way, DOI was trying to replace existing
systems. In fact, that’s far from the case. Actually, we’ve encouraged the creation
of new registries and new sorts of identifier standards. We’ve also been
involved in new IS O standards like IS TC, which is a standard for textual abstractions,
and ISNI , the international standards and name identifier.
[7:11] It’s been quite a long story, but I think our involvement with IS O has all
been good. What it means for the community is, I don’t think the ISO standardization
makes a big deal of difference to people already using DOI . By the time
the standard was published, we’d already assigned 60 million DOI s. Clearly,
people weren’t waiting for the standard to come along to use it. But that was
actually a help in the standards process, the benefit of practical experience of
implementation of what worked.
[7:41] We were able to say, when we, for example, were talking about the metadata
standard that we wanted to associate, “In our experience this is what’s
practical. This may be a better design over here, but we have to deal with reality
at the moment.” That’s been quite a helpful process.
[8:00] ISO standardization is just one of a number of events that’s taken place
with DOI since we started in 2000. We’re quite pleased that we’re still around
after all this time and we haven’t had to make any U-turns. We seem to be getting
a lot of recognition. The publication of the standards actually generated
quite a bit of interest from people who may not have been aware of it before.
For example, this interview is a sign of that. Henrik: [8:25] Digital Asset Management systems, among other enterprise content
management solutions, often use various kinds of digital object identifiers,
or DOI s, or unique identifiers, UIDs. How is this standard applicable across organizations
and vendors currently using DOI or UIDs for a variety of digital media? Norman: [8:47] It’s a good question. I think I need to tease apart a couple of
the terms there. When people talk about digital object identifiers and imagine it
all in lower case, they’re using it generically. When they talk about it with capitalized
DOI , they’re specifically referring to the DOI system, which has got its
own set of rules, policies, and principles. DOI is a trademark, simply because we
wanted to preserve the consistency of the system for that reason. [9:15] If you
want to work with others to manage or you want to pass onto other parties in a
supply chain or you want to simply make available to third parties that you may
not yet know about, you want to simply make them discoverable, then you’ve
probably got to find a way of interoperating and ensuring persistence of your
identifiers.
[9:37] That’s where we come in. We offer a framework which is effectively out of
the box. It’s a shared infrastructure, both technical and social, with the benefits
of economy of scale. You can keep your own identifier system and your own
metadata, but put it into that framework. You can keep your own autonomy of
the community that you’re looking after, but take advantage of a system that’s
becoming increasingly widely known, standardized with standard tools.
[10:09] A couple of good examples. One of the earliest implementations of
DOI was something called CrossRef it’s all one word, CrossRef.org which uses
DOIs to link scholarly publishing articles. That’s a community of now, I think,
approaching 4,000 different publishers, but they have their own rules. The DOI
system, as they use it, is the same as anyone else would use the DOI system,
just the common rules of the road. Norman: [10:35] Another example is the Entertainment Identifier Registry, EIDR.org. They’re using DOI s in the movie assets, commercial television broadcasting area. Again, they’re using the same system technically, same social infrastructure,
but they also lay on top of that their own social infrastructure for their own
community and their own rules about what they cover.
[11:00] What the DOI system offers, I think, is an ability to not throw away what
you’ve already been using, but to make it more usable with other systems and
to make it persistent. Of course, in detail, we offer some common tools free of
charge, licensed to the Handle System for resolution, tools of the Vocabulary
Mapping Framework, some common technical infrastructure and so forth.
[11:23] But that’s not the most important thing. Anyone can build their own
infrastructure if they want to. I think what we offer really is a community, a very
large community of interest, greater together than people would be working on
their own. Henrik: [11:37] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Norman: [11:41] I’ve thought about this. I think a number of points, really.
Almost at the top of the list, I would say don’t reinvent the wheel. I don’t just
mean use DOI s. A lot of useful work has already been done. [11:51] When we
designed the DOI system, again, we didn’t reinvent the wheel. We used existing
components. I think what a lot of technical people don’t necessarily realize is
that things like ontologies and classification work in the ‘60s things like library
cataloguing tools, which people may consider to be rather old fashioned actually
solve an awful lot of problems about organization, information, and contextual
ontologies. Things like FRBR, which the libraries came up with some time
ago. That’s one point. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
[12:21] I would say also look beyond your immediate community. Digital convergence
means you can’t afford to think only about your immediate problems if
you’re going to have something that lasts and is extensible. I do realize there
is a tension there, of course. If you’re looking for cost justification, there is a
tendency to look first of all to your own community and secondly to be relatively
short term.
[12:44] A related point is, think for the long term. You’ve got to use a technology,
but don’t forget the possibilities for migration to other technologies. Don’t
forget things like thinking at the right level of abstraction, extensibility, and
scalability.
[12:58] A further point is, we often talk about persistence identifiers as being
around for a while and we often talk about interoperability. I think they’re two
sides of the same coin. Persistence is simply interoperability with the future. Norman: [13:12] I would say also something that I found running the social organizations
that I’ve been involved in for 15 years. It’s very easy to get involved
in arguments about definitions. That’s pointless. Don’t argue about definitions.
It’s futile.
[13:25] What you do need to do is try to be explicit. Clarify what you mean, and
understand what someone else means. They may have a legitimate reason for
thinking differently than you. Common terms, I think, like identifier, like stakeholders,
like community. When people use them, they often have a vested interest
or a shading towards their particular understanding of what that term means.
Try to understand where they’re coming from.
[13:55] The final thing, which is not my motto but was attributed to Einstein.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Don’t assume
that the obvious solution is always the right one. Henrik: [14:07] Great points. Well, thanks, Norman. Norman: [14:09] Pleasure. Henrik: [14:11] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 