Digital Asset Management Implementation Strategy · 2013-04-01 · DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT 6 The digital assets that BlitzCorps‟ DAM will be comprised of are images and video clips

Running Head: DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT 1

Digital Asset Management

Derek J. Stalcup

San José State University

DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT 2

Abstract

A short overview of the components required to set up a digital

asset management system for a fictional advertising firm.

Assets are addressed, a metadata model is implemented, and

taxonomy is formulated. Potential issues dealing with workflow,

licensing, and vendors are discussed.

Keywords: digital asset management, DAM, metadata,

taxonomy, workflow, libraries


Introduction

For the purposes of this project I will be thoughtfully

developing and planning a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.

First and foremost I will elaborate on what DAM is and its

imaginary organization, their goals, fit the DAM systems goal to

that organization, address the digital assets to be managed, and

elaborate on a comprehensive taxonomy to address the

organization of the assets. This will be followed by covering

issues of workflow, digital preservation, licensing strategy.

I will then finally be able to address several of the potential

DAM vendors whose systems may be of use.

What’s all this DAM noise about?!

DAM is an acronym for Digital Asset Management. „D‟ is for

digital, as in the assets managed are digital. The „A‟ stands

for assets, possessions that an organization has created,

licensed, or owns outright. These digital assets can range from

images to videos; the sky is really the limit as organizations

diversify to the point that they can possess a little bit of

everything ALA Google or Yahoo!. The „M‟ stands for management;

this is where information science professionals get to step in

and work their magic. Ōrdō ā chaos is one way to sum up the

task of a professional seeking to manage a DAM system. DAM


professionals will need to develop taxonomy and a comprehensive

metadata scheme (or use/purchase one already set up) and

basically do what they‟ve done for hundreds of years: make

things, now digital things, accessible to users. Their mission,

if they choose to accept it: to continue this tradition into the

future 2.0 and 3.0 versions of the information science (IS)

field. To get the wheels rolling, a DAM professional will need

to develop a relevant profile of the organization.

Organization Profile

The invented organization that this DAM will be created for

will be BlitzCorp; a public relations firm dealing primarily

with clients in the independent music industry. BlitzCorp

currently has approximately 50 employees spread throughout

several offices spanning the west coast. BlitzCorp seeks to

better organize its digital assets and seamlessly share them

through implementation of a DAM system.

Business Objectives

The business objectives of BlitzCorp are threefold: “1) to

provide a comprehensive and timely press response with the most

current media and information available, 2) provide public

relation services to clients with transparent and properly

licensed materials, and 3) to increase revenue and eliminate

waste through increased use of digital media.”

User Needs


At times there can be a disjunction between the stated

objectives of an organization and their needs. Fortunately

proper planning in the early stages can help address this before

a DAM system is set up that is „what they asked for‟ but not

„what they wanted.’ BlitzCorp needs a friendly GUI for their DAM

that allows for members of its organization with intermediate

personal computer skills to be able to operate, a comprehensive

metadata scheme to order its varying assets in a time sensitive

and secure manner, and it needs a way to share files throughout

a geographically dispersed workforce. In order to provide a

comprehensive overview that meets both the needs and the wants

of BlitzCorp, it is crucial to state the DAM system goals and

relate them back to the stated business objectives and needs.

DAM System Goals

The primary three goals of the DAM system have been set up

to address the main interests of BlitzCorp: 1) organize digital

assets to provide a digital platform to quickly acquire and

share information internally and externally, 2) Assemble

comprehensive metadata scheme regarding BlitzCorps digital

assets with special attention given to ensure confidence in

using licensed materials, and 3) choose a DAM vendor whose

services will best meet with the needs of BlitzCorp.

Digital Assets


The digital assets that BlitzCorps‟ DAM will be comprised

of are images and video clips. The relative similarity of each

asset group allows for a high level of metadata fields that can

be shared. BlitzCorp has approximately 5,000 digital images and

2,000 digital video clips. The digital images primarily consist

of album covers, band logos, and band photographs. The digital

videos are promotional items such as live concert footage clips

and band interviews. For the purposes of this DAM, several

metadata fields and vocabulary designed in previous assignments

will be utilized and expanded upon to fit BlitzCorps‟ needs.

Metadata Models & Vocabulary Design

Digital Image Elements

The kind of metadata that is important for these purposes

is mostly descriptive, but also structural and administrative.

BlitzCorps‟ clients are primarily independent music labels who

release music in various formats; vinyl records are the primary

promotion area for BlitzCorp. The image assets are mostly

record covers, but there is also a sizable collection of

promotional band photographs. This required metadata that is

able to identify the cover scans along with the digital band

photographs. The ability to associate every photograph of a

band with every release associated could prove to be very useful

when developing promotional materials. There are already

existing scans of album covers and promotional photos; all the


materials submitted to BlitzCorp are digital, so the need to

develop a plan to digitize is unneeded. One area that is

addressed later in the paper is the need to enter in new digital

works.

Descriptive metadata is concerned with describing an asset for

the purposes of discovery, retrieval, and uniquely

identification. Special attention was given to descriptive and

administrative metadata as I felt it would be the most relevant

to the searchers needs. The much needed administrative metadata

strategy seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of elements

relevant ranging from when the digital image was created to the

assets relevant copyright licensing information.

Artist – This field represents the artist‟s name. This is

useful for searchers seeking images by a particular artist.

Artists‟ names will be logged as they appear on their

releases. If an artist, such as “the artist formerly known

as Prince” needs to be added, their original name will be

used and a note will be added in the description field

commenting on the unprintable/usable name.

o Example: ATAQUE FRONTAL will be logged in all capital

letters and KAKKA-HÄTÄ 77 will be logged using the

extended Latin alphabet with the Ä with the umlaut.

Title – This field represents the title of the release.

This field is useful for those searchers seeking out a


specific release cover. If record is self-titled, “S/T”

will be entered. Title will be entered with symbols as they

appear.

o Example: “MONEY TALK$”

File name - This will be unique to the file name. This

field is useful for searching for a specific file.

o Example: The Vicious – Alienated LP will be “The

Vicious – Alienated LP.png”

Vinyl Size – The size field describes the records diameter.

Sizes can range from 16inch 12inch, 10inch, 8inch, and

7inch. Inches are used rather than centimeters as they

reflect the common language a vinyl record patron would

search for.

o Example: 7inch

Description – This field is used to describe any other

special information about the record. This can range from

“limited to 2,000 copies” to “blue color vinyl” to “test

pressing”.

o Example: A photo of a record that is a pre-release

pressing”Pre-Release Pressing”.

Publisher – This field describes the record label that

released the record. This is useful for searchers needing a

specific release of the record. Often time‟s labels re-

release records with variants on covers/songs.


o Example: A query may look like: the beatles AND

parlophone AND please, please me.

Catalogue Number: This is a unique number used by the

publisher/record label to identify the record. This is

usually found on the vinyl matrix etched in between the

vinyl grooves and the center label.

o EX: Overthrow Records OVERTHROW-42

Date Released – This field allows the user to search for

music created in 1982 through querying “1982”.

o Example: “1982”

Language – This field allows the user to search for records

in the collection that are sung in various languages.

o Example: “Swedish”

Country of Band Origin – It is important to have separate

“language” and “country of origin” search fields as many

bands choose to sing in a language that is foreign their

country. IE the heavy metal band Sodom of Germany sings

exclusively in English.

o Example: “Sweden”

Genre – This field is used to describe the musical genre of

record. The accepted fields are arbitrarily limited to

Jazz, Country, Rock, Hip-Hop, Heavy Metal, Pop, Soul, Punk,

R&B and Other.


o Example: “Punk”

Photographer – This field is used to identify the

photographer of a photo. This field will be comprised of

their name.

o Example: “Ross Halfin”

Date Taken – This field is utilized to identify the date a

photo was taken. This could prove useful when assembling

promotional materials dealing with an artist‟s „evolution.‟

Dimensions – This field will be entered as “heightxwidth”

in pixels.

o EX:3008x2000

Width - 3008 pixels

Height - 2000 pixels

Horizontal Resolution – 300dpi

Vertical Resolution – 300dpi

Color Representation – This field is relevant to

identifying the color space and quality of an image.

Different formats are optimized for different uses sRGB for

internet viewing and Adobe RGB For professional printing

settings.

EXIF version – This field represents the EXIF version of

the file.

o Example: 0221


Entered By – This element provides a field to enter unique

employee ID # to be entered when materials are added to the

DAM system. This is useful for identifying who handled

what materials

o Example: 123123123

Copyright – This field will consist of the year a work was

copyrighted.

o Example: ©1986

Copyright Information – This field will have the

information relevant to the licensing and rights of a

particular asset. A second field was needed to address

some works that are licensed under the creative commons

license or “copy-left” as some independent artists are

using this to promote their work.

o Example: Work is licensed as “copy-left” and will be

made available for any non-profit or educational

purposes.

Video Clip Elements

Artist – This field represents the artist‟s name. This is

useful for searchers seeking images by a particular artist.

Artists‟ names will be logged as they appear on their

releases. If an artist, such as “the artist formerly known

as Prince” needs to be added, their original name will be


used and a note will be added in the description field

commenting on the unprintable/usable name.

o Example: ATAQUE FRONTAL will be logged in all capital

letters and KAKKA-HÄTÄ 77 will be logged using the

extended Latin alphabet with the Ä with the umlaut.

Video Title -- This will be the unique video title. Having

a unique identifying title will allow for an easy retrieval

of the file. If there are several different videos of the

same performance the videos will all be titled with the

unique identifying label.

o Example: “Video Clip X #1, Video Clip X #2, Video Clip

X #3”

File Name -- This will be unique to the file name. This

field is useful for searching for a specific file.

o Example: searching for aaaaaa.mov instead of

aaaaaa.mkv

Year Released -- This field will contain the release year

for the digital video clip in a four digit format. It may

be useful for finding clips from a similar year by certain

artists. If the year released is unknown it will be left

blank.

o Example: 1999 Clip was released in 1999

File Type -- This field is used to show the file type and

is relevant if the user is only using/prefers a certain


type of video encoding software. Some files may need to be

converted to a format that has increased accessibility and

fits within the 508 standards (see more @

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/e-learning.htm).

Luckily this will change has the shift to HTML5s‟ awesome

new embedding feature.

o Example: .mov is a QuickTime Movie file. So

“QuickTime Movie” will be utilized.

File Size -- This field represents the KB size of the file.

o Example: “11,305 KB”

MD5 Checksum -- This field represents the checksum value of

the file. It is useful for validating the integrity along

with viewing if there has been any alteration. It is also

useful when needing and creating multiple versions of clips

in various resolutions. The MD5 Checksum has

o Example: 6327f75b038419620038e4e0dc329747

Duration -- This field reflects the video clips length. It

will be structured in a 0:00 timed format with minutes:

seconds displayed. If a clip is less than a second 00.01

will be used.

o Example: 0:07 a seven second clip

Dimensions – This field will be entered as “heightxwidth”

in pixels. This field is very useful with regards to the

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/e-learning.htm


quality of the video. Many restrictions are placed on what

quality of video a website will host or embed for the

purposes of saving time or bandwidth.

o Example: 1900x1080

Width - 1900 pixels

Height - 1080 pixels

Horizontal Resolution - 300dpi

Vertical Resolution – 300 dpi

Universal Resource Locator -- This field represents the

unique web address for each particular clip. This will be

useful for finding where the video clip has been shared.

This is useful for controlling and monitoring approved

uploads of certain videos.

o Example: http://www.youtube.com/user/VEVO

Description -- This field will have a brief general

description of each clip. The description will be general

in nature and attempt to describe the clips setting,

characters, and action.

o Example: In a dojo, two characters fight using martial

arts in slow motion and one is knocked through a large

post.

Keywords -- This field will be comprised of general

keywords that reflect what is transpiring in the video


clip. The list of appropriate words will consist of: Live

Performance, Concert, Interview, and Partying.

o Example: Partying, Interview

Entered By – This element provides a field to enter unique

employee ID # to be entered when materials are added to the

DAM system. This is useful for identifying who handled

what materials

o Example: 123123123

Copyright – This field will consist of the year a work was

copyrighted and the year in a four digit format.

o Example: ©1986

Copyright Information – This field will have the

information relevant to the licensing and rights of a

particular asset. A second field was needed to address

some works that are licensed under the creative commons

license or “copy-left” as some independent artists are

using this to promote their work.

o Example: Art work has been licensed as “copy-left” and

will be made available for any non-profit or

educational purposes. The audio is © WMG.

Taxonomy & Organization

How will it be organized?


First and foremost the question to answer is „how will it

be organized?’ For the purposes of this DAM, the assets will be

organized in a hierarchical manner with artist name being the

top of the DAM „totem pole.‟ The folders will be located on a

local server that is connected via a cloud service.

[-] Artist

[-] Sonic Youth

[-] Digital Images

[+] Album Covers

[-] Sonic Youth (1982)

1982 – Sonic Youth – “Sonic Youth

- Front.png


- Insert.png


- Back.png

[+] Confusion Is Sex (1983)

[+] Bad Moon Rising (1985)

[+] EVOL (1986)

[+] Sister (1987)

[+] Daydream Nation (1988)

[+] Goo (1990)

[+] Dirty (1992)


[+]Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No

Star (1994)

[+] Washing Machine (1995)

[+] A Thousand Leaves (1998)

[+] NYC Ghosts & Flowers (2000)

[+] Murray Street (2002)

[+] Sonic Nurse (2004)

[+] Rather Ripped (2006)

[+] The Eternal (2009)

[+]Logos

[+]Promo photographs

[-]Video Clips

[+]Live

[-]Promotional

1985 – Music Video – “Bad Moon Rising”

[+]Interview

What will search interface look like?

The search user interface (UI) will look similar to the one

utilized by Widen 6.0. It allows for searching utilizing at

first the most important top five fields for images and videos,

then a drop down bar labeled “advanced searching options” where

every metadata element will be available to plug a query into.

How will the assets be displayed?


Assets will be displayed as thumbnails initially. The

thumbnails will be automatically generated images of the image

or a screen capture from the video clip. They will set in rows

and columns with the file name displayed directly underneath

each.

Who will have access?

Users will be given differential access based on their

title and responsibilities @ BlitzCorp. Due to the large number

of leaked album covers, songs, and videos, some folders or

images will be only accessible to a limited number of users

until they are ready to be made public. Each user ID will be

logged every time any asset is examined. This will assist

BlitzCorp in tracking and tracing potential leaks.

Workflow Issues

Automatic entry

Many fields are subject to automatic entry as a logged in

user with the permission to upload and edit materials will have

the Entered By, DPI, EXIF, duration etcetera. This will free up

a significant amount of time when adding new assets to the DAM

system.

Digital Preservation

There isn‟t a need to spend a great deal of effort or

energy developing a digital preservation strategy for BlitzCorp.

When they lose a client the need to keep digital assets related


to that client cease. The area of digital preservation that is

relevant to BlitzCorp is migration and re-creation. BlitzCorp

will need to re-create its images into lower resolutions through

its DAM system for various purposes including mobile web

promotion pages and online promotion geared towards countries or

areas with slower internet capabilities. BlitzCorp will need to

possibly re-create video files as new encoding software comes

about. Luckily there is now native embedding in HTML5 which

will help eliminate the need to use some proprietary codec‟s.

Licensing/Legal Issues

As addressed previously, there may be issues with the need

to re-create certain copyrighted digital works. Luckily the

assets are submitted directly from record labels who maintain

the rights. This information will be added to the relevant

metadata fields to ensure that there is no usage of unlicensed

materials.

Potential DAM Vendors

Disclaimer: I was only able to actually use Widen 6.0; the other

DAM systems I was just able to watch promotional videos or read

about features on their websites.

Widen 6.0

Widen 6.0 seems like the ideal candidate for BlitzCorp. It

is simple to use, has a “light” UI, and allows for direct

publishing of photos to multiple social networking sites. The


ability to aggregate various assets into custom folders can be

very useful. One use that crossed my mind was assembling

multiple artists‟ promotional assets who are touring together.

The metadata is comprehensive and the ability to tab between

different levels of metadata is great.

celum [sic]

celum [sic] seems like it could also be another good choice

for BlitzCorp. The UI looks very clean and the entire suite

looks like it would be easy to use. The ability to shorten,

edit, and share videos is a great feature. The integrated

presentation management is a really innovative way to share the

most current information throughout the entire organization.

Total Cost of Ownership

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is probably one of the most

important segments in the entire report. BlitzCorp is a smaller

organization whose needs are on a smaller scale than several

other DAM systems that I‟ve learned about over the semester.

Hosting files via cloud may be a simple way to avoid hiring more

IT staff or adding a greater workload to existing employees.

Utilizing a DAM vendor will also lessen the workload. The

upside would be that the DAM vendors‟ professionals will deal

with almost everything: hosting, security, and software updates.

The downside is that there will be another brick added to the

Great Wall of Bureaucracy and BlitzCorp will need to give up


some level of control. It is incredibly hard to determine a

potential TCO for this DAM system as the vendor isn‟t chosen and

most don‟t provide rates or quotes for their systems. TCO would

most likely need to be addressed upon the first meeting the

BlitzCorp/any potential customer.

Closing Thoughts

In this report I elaborated on what a DAM is, formulated an

imaginary organization, their goals, matched the DAM systems

goals to the organization, and addressed the digital assets to

be managed, developed comprehensive metadata fields, and

assembled a taxonomy to address the organization of the assets.

While the picture painted is in no way a complete one, it does

give a firm ground to base many DAM related decisions off of.

Documents

Digital Asset Management Implementation Strategy · 2013-04-01 · DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT 6 The digital assets that BlitzCorps‟ DAM will be comprised of are images and video clips