Making digital asset management (DAM) a success for higher education

How to plan, structure and utilize digital asset management solutions October 8, 2013

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Corey Chimko Global DAM administrator, Cornell University Photography Department

Who’s talking www.widen.com

Who is Widen?

Digital Asset Management

Premedia

A comprehensive understanding of the asset lifecycle

What’s top of mind for Higher Education when it comes to DAM?

Controlling Access

 

HIGHER EDUCATION

AND DAM  

Project Scope & Planning

 

Controlled Access  

Search and

Metadata  

Project Scope and Planning

Overview Project Scope +

Planning   •  Who should be included in a DAM project

within the institution?

•  How do you know what assets you have and what should go in the DAM system?

•  What kind of time and resources should you allocate to a DAM project?

 

Project Scope +

Planning  

What Cornell did •  Talk with users about wants and needs

o  Understand how your stakeholders think and want to use the DAM system

o  Do what’s best for everyone because you can’t please all individuals

•  Look at workflow o  Higher-Ed collections tend to be huge and

decentralized

o  Think about pace and deadlines

•  People tend to look ahead to the next project and forget about close-out like getting assets from completed projects into the DAM system

Project Scope +

Planning   •  Strategize the DAM system setup

o  Worked closely with his department to make sure things were set up right

o  Selected a stakeholder group for decision-making and buy in

o  A DAM champion to own and admin the system

o  Started small and got it down before they expanded and invited others into the system

•  Execute against a system setup checklist

o  It’s ongoing, not just a project, so maintain the system for optimal adoption and usage

o  Timing was 3 months from inquiry to system launch

What Cornell did

System setup checklist The checklist helps to project timelines and determine which processes are priorities.

System setup checklist

Project Scope +

Planning   •  Look for the assets that people use and

need the most, then prioritize files o  Gathered files in one place, De-duped, standardized

sizes, discarded useless assets, and established master assets

•  Migrate assets from hard drives and servers in a measured and controlled way o  Batch upload gathers groups of assets at one time

o  Simple folder/category structure with dates and numbers to organize assets

What Cornell did

Expanded chronology list

Expanded units

Expanded priorities

Controlling Access

Overview Controlling Access

  •  Should you provide access by department or allow University-wide access?

•  What is the relationship to the public: should there be any public access and what assets should be made visible?  

•  How do we make sure that only certain people can access our digital assets?

What Cornell did

•  Look at the needs of Departments vs. University-wide o  Discussed ownership over the assets and

sub-brands of assets in each college

•  Work with an internal stakeholder group in advance to agree on permissioning assets organizationally o  Considered what assets were proprietary, licensed,

or needed to be regulated

o  Created sharing and repurposing content policies to make permissioning easier

o  Managed permissions for small units vs. large units and controlled what users have access to

Controlling Access

 

Sign-in page

Dashboard page

Search and Metadata

Search and

Metadata  

Overview

•  How does controlled vocabulary help with searchability of your assets?

•  What are some best practices for tagging assets?

•  What are the key considerations when creating your metadata schema?

•  Are there limitations on the number of metadata fields you can have in your DAM system?

 

Search and

Metadata   •  Categorize assets in the DAM system for

best searchability •  Use vocabulary standardization and

drop down lists o  Understand how your stakeholders think and what

types of metadata fields they’d like to see o  To eliminate adding metadata manually, use

standardized pick lists for metadata entry

•  Avoid complexity when organizing and tagging assets o  Only apply metadata that’s common to all of the

assets (e.g., date) o  Tag assets subsequently to fill in data that’s

different for different assets in the batch

What Cornell did

Search and

Metadata   o  Deal with redundancies (like Joe Clark Hall,

Joe Clark, Joe Clark Memorial Lecture Series, etc) by using metadata filters

o  Avoid use of unexplained acronyms

•  Set up relevant metadata fields as filter searches o  Enter metadata for those unfamiliar with

your college

•  Map embedded metadata from assets to fields in the DAM system o  You can add new metadata or edit it any time

o  The more tagging you do at upload, the better

What Cornell did

List values

Field settings

Metadata fields

File metadata

Tips from Corey

Tips from Corey

1. Take the time to do it right the first time If you don’t get things set up right initially, it’s hard to go back and do it over. •  It will be easier to keep your system organized,

current, and usable in the long run

•  Tag all of your assets at upload, then edit them later as needed

Tips from Corey

2. Assign an admin early in the process Do this before you implement your DAM system, not after.

•  A person who can champion all things DAM – user roles and permissions, system setup and training, ongoing maintenance and upgrades

•  Characteristics of a good DAM admin: •  Good time management skills

•  Extreme attention to detail

•  Wealth of institutional knowledge

•  Familiar with technology

•  Not an intern or student

Tips from Corey

3. Know the importance of user governance Not everyone needs to be a user and very few users need access to everything.

•  Roles and permissions determine who has access to which assets

•  Your admin should decide how much control users of the DAM system should have (e.g. view, download and upload, share, edit, etc)

•  You don’t want just anyone editing metadata, as it’s the language of your DAM system and needs to stay in tact

Q and A

Thank you for attending today!

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Contact Corey: cjc85@cornell.edu Cornell taxonomy/ best practices page: http://univcomm.cornell.edu/photography/taxonomy/index.html URL for MC3: http://cornell.widencollective.com