How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Do you believe the field of Digital Asset Management will continue to grow? Why or why not?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals or people aspiring to be DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, we’re speaking with Theresa Regli.
[0:08] Theresa, how are you? Theresa Regli: [0:09] I’m great. How are you? Henrik: [0:10] Good. Thanks. Theresa: [0:12] Good. Henrik: [0:12] Theresa, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Theresa: [0:17] I’m involved in a couple of different ways. My principal involvement,
really, is as an analyst. I work for an analyst and research firm that’s called
The Real Story Group. [0:30] And we publish, basically, product and vendor
evaluation reports and essentially evaluate different technologies on the market.
It’s kind of like a “Consumer Reports” sort of thing. I am the Digital Asset
Management lead analyst for the company.
[0:48] I also do some consulting, and I help people learn about Digital Asset
Management and pick Digital Asset Management products based on what’s
most appropriate for them.
[1:00] That’s my main two-pronged association with the DAM world. Henrik: [1:06] Excellent. Do you believe that the field of Digital Asset
Management will continue to grow? Why or why not? Theresa: [1:13] That’s an interesting question. I think the field of Digital Asset
Management and the discipline of Digital Asset Management is something that
is growing and will continue to grow, because the number of assets we have
is really continuing to grow, the number of images, video, audio, etc. All those
things are constantly getting bigger and bigger, and there’s more and more
of them, and we need people and technology to manage them. So I definitely
think that is going to increase and the people involved will continue to increase.
[1:46] Interestingly, the technology, or the vendors that are selling the technology,
aren’t really growing, I think, at the same pace as the number of assets and
the amount of work that needs to get done. I think there’s sort of a gap that
is existing between the number of things to be managed and the speed with
which vendors are able to address it. I think that’s a little bit slower than the
actual field is growing.
[2:15] Yes, I think it’s going to continue to grow. I just think there’s different parts
of it that are growing at different paces, really. Henrik: [2:20] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals or
people aspiring to be a DAM professional? Theresa: [2:27] Well, I think, of course, the number one thing that I would share,
just because it’s my particular bailiwick and it’s my particular area of expertise, is
just to make an effort to understand Digital Asset Management technology and
how it really works. [2:45] It’s not that that’s the panacea to all the problems to,
or all the challenges that are involved with, solving Digital Asset Management.
But I think there’s a lot of very general approaches to Digital Asset Management
that don’t consider the technology enough, and the details of the technology,
and how that could potentially change things or make them more efficient. Also,
how they, in some cases, might make things more difficult, and require different
sorts of human tasks that are different from the ones they have now.
[3:23] I just think in general, just learning about the technology, how it really
works, what the different components are, how it’s successful in certain organizations
and maybe why it fails in other organizations, I think, is really important
for DAM professionals, whether you’re already one or whether you’re aspiring
to be one.
[3:41] Also, just to make sure that you’re out there and you’re also meeting and
talking with other people who work in the industry. I think that’s important,
regardless of what industry that you’re in, but in particular, with Digital Asset
Management, we have various events, and there’s lots of places online where
we can learn about it, too.
[3:57] Those are really my two main pieces of advice. Henrik: [4:01] Excellent. Well, thank you, Theresa. Theresa: [4:03] Yeah. Henrik: [4:03] For more on this, 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.
How do you deal the challenges of cultural heritage and DAM?
What advice would you have for DAM professionals or people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. My name is Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Jake
Nadal. Jake, how are you? Jacob Nadal: [0:11] Real well, Henrik. Thank you. Henrik: [0:12] Jake, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Jacob: [0:16] I am the Preservation Officer for the UCLA Library. I’ve been involved
with the whole digital library effort in some way or another for about a
decade now. Preservation officer, I might explain to you something about it as
two parts, in terms of Digital Asset Management. One of those is kind of trying
to get assets that are worth managing in the first place, and the other is making
sure that all those assets will maintain value. [0:45] They’ll still be usable from
one asset management system to another, that as we sometimes have a planning
horizon that stretches into decades and longer, until we expect that at a
certain point those assets will move from system to system.
[0:59] Both of them are sort of shepherding roles for our digital assets, our
digital material. And I think the thing that unites those is that we look to have
certain technical criteria, certain specifications and standards that we produce
content to. Of course, I work with a great team all across the UCLA library and
the UCLA system. We’re really a set of people with very specific technical competencies
for each step of the chain. Henrik: [1:26] Excellent. How do you deal with the challenges of cultural heritage
and DAM? Jacob: [1:33] There again, I think there are two parts here. One, and probably
the most interesting to our audience here, is the actual internal workflow. The
other part is really about what cultural heritage assets are and the particular mission
obligation that comes with that. [1:50] In our workflow, we’ve been talking a
lot about having a three part strategy. It might be better to say a three part test
for preservation activities at UCLA library. One is that we always try to have a
method for doing analysis or doing some information gathering about whatever
our problem is. That leads to a proposed treatment or a course of action. We try
not to act until we have some evidence.
[2:17] And all of that we try to have happen in house and have that be the bulk
of the work, just as a matter of good management. We want to, when we’ve
done out part, have it be more or less ready to go.
[2:30] And then, knowing that we will be either incomplete…We may have subject
expertise that we lack, which is usually the case. If we’re dealing with, say,
an old Armenian scroll and we’re creating a digital version of that, we may need
to talk to language and subject experts to figure out how that will be most
useful to its users.
[2:52] Sometimes that’s an area of technical concern. Very often, as we’re dealing
with, right now, a big topic for us is research data. Our scientists especially
produce enormous research data sets, and in the arts and humanities, it’s very
common now to use multiple sources of data, so there may be news video
feeds, there may be GIS information, and those may come together in a research
project.
[3:22] Very often, within the library itself, we have to manage that asset, or a
group of assets, but we need to look outside to a particular technical expert to
help guide us on the best way to do that. That second stage is sort of outside
review and approval, and then we always try to have a hedge, some strategy
in case things go wrong. Sometimes that’s as simple as just retaining a previous
version.
[3:49] Sometimes that’s retaining an alternate format, so video is an area right
now where we know what formats are good for use right now, but we’re very
much uncertain about what formats will be good for use and repurposing even
five years from now, and sometimes an alternate format is simply the authentic
artifact. We may scan a photo, and we may do a lot of work with that scanned
digital version, but, of course, we’re going to keep the original photo.
[4:20] Sometimes that’s identifying a third party provider that we can fall back
on. Especially as we work with publishers, we’re often licensing content to make
available to our users, so we do certain things to care for that content, but then
we will also arrange with that publisher and a third party.
[4:36] A group like Portico is an example, and the LOCKSS Project, or the
CLOCKSS Project. That stands for “Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe.” That’s a
group that operates out of Stanford. They both work with libraries and publishers
to be a third party archiving service, so there’s always a third group that can
provide access.
[4:55] We always try to have some sort of hedge, knowing that we’re kind of
planning for the future, and, of course, that planning for the future part is, in
some ways, the thing we do least, day to day.
[5:08] We have a job just like everybody else, but it’s part of what makes the job
so fantastic, that we’re building this collection, or record, or last resort, and, of
course, the materials we get to work with are incredible artifacts, this wonderful
digital versions of them, and now, increasingly, the born digital research projects
of some of the best and brightest.
[5:29] UCLA, of course, has got a got a pretty interesting community of people
creating digital assets here. Henrik: [5:35] Excellent. What advice would you have to give to DAM professionals
or people aspiring to become a DAM professional? Jacob: [5:41] I don’t know if you’re familiar with Tom Peterson, sort of a management
guru management consultant. He has this great catch phrase “Out read
the other guy.” [laughter] Jacob: [5:54] I find myself saying that a lot lately. My own engagement with the
DAM community comes from recognizing that the conversations I was having
with digital library folks and with preservation colleagues were very similar to
conversations I was encountering in this other community, this Digital Asset
Management community. [6:17] That’s a two way street. I would encourage
anyone in DAM, and especially people who have an interest in the cultural heritage
side of it, to look at your related professions. Look at both the customers
you serve as well as people who maybe share some of the same technical base
and technical infrastructure.
[6:38] Your photographers, your records managers. We’re all trying to do some
of the same things whether we call it library science, inventory management,
manufacturing. The people I find who are at the head of the game and are the
most interesting to work with are the people who can see what can be interpreted
or adapted to fit their means.
[7:03] In cultural heritage specifically there’s some more practical things, or more
immediate things. A number of Library Information Science programs now and
offering specializations in digital libraries and digital information.
[7:18] My alma mater, Indiana University, does a lot of work in this area. There’s a
program called DIGIN, DIGIN, at Arizona. I know Chapel Hill and Michigan more
and more. Of course, they’re all just trying to keep up with UCLA.
[laughter] Jacob: [7:36] All those programs are worth comparing and considering. Very
specifically in cultural heritage, it’s worth knowing that there’s a bias towards
open and or free software solutions. Henrik: [7:47] Makes sense. Jacob: [7:48] If you know that LAMP stack, LINUX, Apache, MySQL, PHP you’re
in really good shape in terms of tech skills. Of course, none of us are out from
under the shadow of Adobe. [8:01] Certainly in my sector a lot of the tools we
use day-to-day look a lot like the tools that are in use elsewhere. Henrik: [8:10] Of course. Jacob: [8:12] Or in XML. Henrik: [8:15] Yes, always important. Jacob: [8:16] If you’ve got XML, the rest comes pretty easily. Henrik: [8:19] True. Thanks Jake. Jacob: [8:21] My pleasure. I’m glad I could do this. Henrik: [8:23] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
Jack Van Antwerp discusses Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How do you achieve increasing user adoption of the DAM within your organization?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals or people aspiring to be DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, we’re speaking with Jack Van Antwerp.
Jack [0:08] How are you? Jack Van Antwerp: [0:08] I’m doing very well. How are you doing, Henrik? Henrik: [0:10] Good. Jack, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Jack: [0:15] I’m the Director of Photography at The Wall Street Journal and my
involvement was to bring a Digital Asset Management system to our workflow.
Photography is a new thing for the Journal. It required us, from the ground up,
starting a system that would allow the paper and online and other future things
to find, sort and deliver mostly photography for right now. We’re also moving
into some video and other kinds of things. Henrik: [0:49] Awesome. Jack, how have you increased user adoption of the
DAM within your organization? Jack: [0:59] In one respect, it’s been self-activating because we had nothing
and the previous method was pretty much going out hunting and pecking for
photographs on dozens of different websites and photo services. When we had
the model turned upside down and these photo services were pushing to us
the photos and we were bringing them into the system, it was such a leap forward
in the ability to get things fast and to have them easily searchable really
just became very fast. [1:44] There were a few resisters. Some people enjoyed
their own work flow, but it was quite surprising that even just a few months
afterwards…There were areas where we had a few generic logons that we’d had
going for some people and these logons got spread around.
[2:06] When we were going from our test box to our final box, there was some
planned outage. I told the people that needed to know but I didn’t realize that
the greater organization had really taken upon using this thing in other parts of
the world, actually.
[2:22] We started getting these hysterical emails like, “What’s going on with the
system?” Then we realized how wide it had been adopted and how fast it had
been adopted. Henrik: [2:30] It was a positive, “What’s going on?” rather than a, “What’s going
on? Why did you change my system?” Jack: [2:36] Absolutely. We had yanked the candy bar out of the baby’s hand
and people were quite upset. Just us saying, “Hey, you’re going to have to go
back to the old way for just a very short amount of time,” I don’t even think it
was a full day, people were very unhappy. [2:56] We’ve been able to implement,
I think, some workflows that really capitalize on the metadata that come from
the different agencies, that have made finding and sorting pictures in a very
real-time way, with breaking news, even easier. We’ve tried to conform just in
some simple ways things like the word “United States.”
[3:22] If you’ve got eight different agencies, each one of them does it a different
way. One says “US,” one says “USA,” one has the dots, one doesn’t, so we conformed
all that to just the word “domestic,” and just for the ability to then only
look at domestic pictures has been a huge leap forward.
[3:41] The ability to sort out sports photos, the ability to sort out entertainment
photos, whittles down from what our thousands of thousands of pictures that
one might have to wade through to get at that picture they’re looking for, especially
when you’re just going through the wires to just try to find those best
shots of the day.
[4:01] You can go from thousands and thousands of pictures to maybe only
1,500 or 2,000 that are relevant to you, to the domestic photo editor, or to the
international photo editor, or to the sports photo editor. You can then get to
that a lot quicker, especially when you’re having to browse, where you don’t
know what you’re looking for. There’s no search criteria that says, “Good photo
of the day.” That’s up to the editor’s discretion. Henrik: [4:23] Just to clarify a point that you made earlier, when you meant you
get “pushed photos”, you’re talking about a stream of photography that comes
from different wire services and other agencies. Is that correct? Jack: [4:34] Exactly. They send in to FTP, and our asset management system
picks it up, conforms metadata, puts it into the system, categorizes the high
res, etc. We have two interfaces. We have a thin client and we have a web
application. The thin client is fine when you’re within a state or two of the server,
but in our remote locations, like London and Hong Kong, it just isn’t reactive fast
enough, and they use the web interface. That’s been a great option to have. Henrik: [5:15] Nice. It’s used globally and adopted globally as well? Jack: [5:19] Yes, very much so. Henrik: [5:22] Excellent. Jack: [5:24] We use a system called SCC and they have a great feature where
you are logons and you can create user groups, etc. which has been instrumental
for us because rights for photographs are very much dependent on where
you are in the world. [5:42] A certain agency might be subsold through a special
agency in Japan that has only those rights. Even though we’re buying directly
from the mother ship, that part of the world has its specific problem.
[5:56] We’re able to have people, for instance, in Tokyo have their own logon
group, which would exclude certain libraries or certain wire services that we
don’t have the right to publish in those countries. That’s been a huge help
with just saving money and also not creating problems with misuse of pictures,
so to speak. Henrik: [6:21] That’s a great example of rights management and use of groups
and permissioning that you just described. Jack: [6:27] Yeah, except when one of those users moves from one region to
the other and doesn’t tell us. [laughs] We do need the feedback from the users
to find out where they are in the world. As long as we’ve got that, we can work
better with them. Henrik: [6:42] That makes sense. Jack: [6:43] In the context, also, of figuring out if you don’t have a system already,
what kind of system do you need? I feel that they kind of fall into two
categories, a black box, which is out of turnkey, out of the box. It’s ready to
go. Those are great because you can be up and running and working fast. The
downside is, you work the way the system is made. [7:11] A platform based
asset management system is certainly more complex. It takes a lot longer to get
going, but once you have it going the way you want it, you can continually make
tweaks and make changes that work for you.
[7:27] Neither, I would say, is the right way. It really depends on the resources
you have and how much skill you have or how much time you’re willing to put
into making the asset management system will work the way you want it to work
or whether you are able or willing to just conform to the workflow it has built in. Henrik: [7:46] There is no one DAM fits all solution out there. Jack: [7:51] Yeah, absolutely not. I think of the one we have and how it has
worked for us, which has been good, but there are instances where I see other
one that do certain things in a certain way that would be fantastic. There are a
lot of features and a lot of different systems that are going to be right for whatever
somebody’s trying to do, video, photos, text…A lot of different questions
one has to ask. Henrik: [8:16] Yes, exactly. As described to me in the past, an onion with many
layers that are interlinked and related. Jack: [8:24] Exactly. [laughs] Henrik: [8:26] Jack, what advice would you like to share with Digital Asset
Management professionals or people aspiring to be DAM professionals? Jack: [8:36] I have become kind of a DAM professional, if I am one, by
happenstance. Henrik: [8:43] That’s pretty common. [laughs] Jack: [8:47] It was really something into the driver seat because didn’t know
had their hands on the wheels. I guess my advice would be to really think what
I would kind of say, backwards. Think from the usage and the user, the editor
whatever’s happening in your organization the person who’s touching the asset
last. Then build and conceive your workflows from that place backwards. [9:19]
I think, a lot of times, we are immediately thinking of, “Here are the wire service.
We’re worried about the intake of how it comes in”, as opposed to, “OK ,
let’s start with the editor. What do they need and then how can we affect that
through what we’re getting in?”
[9:41] Just the few things we’ve been able to do with massaging data and
making it click for editors to find exactly what they need have made it fast
adoption and deep adoption. You just do not take this away from you. It’s now
become a core part of our workflow.
[10:00] Really think about the user. I find it interesting that a lot of times, people
will be like, “We’ve got 10 million assets or a billion assets or whatever.” It’s certainly
important that a system is able to handle infinite amount of records. You
don’t want to have it limited. But how many records you have is a little bit inconsequential
to finding the one record you need.
[10:29] It’s hard to stand up and wave a flag with excitement for 1 record, as opposed
to having a 100 million records. But really thinking about how can somebody
find that one piece of information they’re looking for. Not, “Oh, we have a
bazillion pieces of information.”
[10:53] Thinking about what can we do to the metadata? How are people looking
for things? What are they actually trying to find and what can we do then
within our keywording or our indexing or whatnot, to make that really efficient
for people? Henrik: [11:09] That makes sense. Jack: [11:10] That would be my advice. Henrik: [11:12] Excellent. Thank you, Jack. [11:14] For more on Digital Asset
Management, log onto anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again
Another DAM Podcast 