Ally’s Digital Media Blog

Before I go into the management side of Digital assets, I thought I would start from the beginning and answer the question:

Just what are Digital Assets?

Digital assets are content and/or media which is digitally stored that is of value to a person or an organisation. These files could include documents, video files, audio files, photos, podcasts, vodcasts and blogs etc.

Digital Asset Management

Now that we know what digital assets are, we can understand that, obvioulsy, they are very important and there needs to be a place that you can save your digital assets and also be able to register and catalog them.

The term “Digital Asset Management” (DAM) refers to the protocol for downloading, renaming, backing up, rating, grouping, archiving, optimising, maintaining, thinning and exporting digital files.

If you are an organisation in the digital media business, a DAM would be extremely important to your business and there is software on the market that you can purchase which will mange your digital assets for you. Example: http://www.clearstorysystems.com/

The problem that can arise with digital assets is that they can be saved with all sorts of names etc, and it can be hard once you have saved your file, to find it again if you have a substantial amount of digital media. For example, I might take a photo of my car and call the file “car1.jpg” - but to someone else, that will mean nothing. With Digital Asset Management, you take your photo and add the information such as what type of car it is, what colour, when you took the photo, and maybe even of which part or vantage you have taken the photo from such as driver side view etc. When you have all your digital assets filed in a DAM you can search for topics or subjects and when the media has been filed correctly, you will get results for all media that suits your query.

An example of good Digital Asset Management is the website Stock Exchange www.sxc.hu . I have used Stock Exchange now for several years, uploading and downloading images to it. When you upload a photo you need to give it a clear name - for example, I recently uploaded some photos of Dunedin Train Station in New Zealand. When uploading you are asked to add as many categories as possible that the particular photo will come under, so in this case, the photo covered; New Zealand, Dunedin, Train Stations, buildings, architecture.

I would also class (on a home computer example) iTunes as a good digital media management tool, as it allows you to search for your music/videos via Artist, song, album, date added, year performed, music genre etc.

Implementation of Digital Assets

Recently I have had to plan the managment and organisation of my own work files for my job, and these files include photos, presentations, audio files, brochures, advertisements, videos and various other graphical files.

This is not digital asset management on a massive scale, but my files are getting too many not be organised and managed. Within my current work structure we use a managment system called SharePoint, which is a Microsoft Product. SharePoint is a browser-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. It can be used to host web sites that access shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications like wikis and blogs from a browser. SharePoint does not intend to replace an entire file server (e.g., an imposed 5 gigabyte file size limitation). SharePoint functionality is exposed as web parts, such as a task list or discussion pane.

All files are uploaded to SharePoint and can be placed in file libraries. In my particular case - the different types are all filed in sections (ie photos, brochures etc) - but I wanted to work it so that if I searched for “Aged Care” all files and media would appear that relate to that area. SharePoint allows this, as you can create a desciption for your file, whatever it might be. So, for example, I can have a picture of a student cutting hair, it can be descripted as: hairdressing, student at work, haircut, practical skills etc. I can also link my files to Wikis and discussion boards.

A bonus of SharePoint in our particular case is that it is backed up regulary, ensuring that data loss is at a minimum.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 1:10 am and is filed under Digital Assets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.