A Question from a Visitor:
Is there software available that can track and "obliterate" or watermark an image once the usage rights has expired on that image?
If so, I would imagine it depends on where that image "lives" once it has been distributed.
Does something like this exist?
In the "old" days of digital asset management users found data by entering a search term into a small box on the screen then, with high hopes, pressed "Enter". Users with a greater sense of adventure bravely pressed the button labeled "Advanced Search" for a more powerful search experience.
So what's wrong with this picture?
Quite by accident
I came across a great reference site that actually provides a framework for
taxonomy development. It is the NASA taxonomy site.
Continue reading "Taxonomy in the Real World: NASA Taxonomy Site" »
A recent question was posted: "I am involved in creating a DAM solution for my company. The asset ranges from video, arts, images and photographs etc. I can say that the assets would be similar to what CORBIS, Getty Images have in place today. I would like to know is there any best practices for building Metadata and Taxonomy; What kind of architecture that I should follow etc. Please provide me some links and resources."
Seth Earley's Answer: Here are a couple of links to start with: Taxonomy Community of Practice: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP/
Continue reading "Best Practices for Building Metadata and Taxonomy " »
A question was recently posted: "I am looking for metadata harvesting and data mining services to gather and organize metadata from years of spreadsheet data plus information from external image vendors' WebPages to input into a DAM with legacy assets. Can you recommend some resources for these service providers?"
Seth Earley's Answer: Interesting that you ask. About two years ago, I had asked one of my consultants to go through a web site and harvest terms from the pages. I was interested in metadata on pages themselves but also in extracting the terms from various kinds of files for inclusion in a taxonomy. We poked around on the web and found some shareware but it did not exactly meet our needs. So, like any good developer, he rolled his own.
In my first post, I suggested a number of questions that I would address here. The first was "What is a taxonomy?". Here, we'll talk about why taxonomy projects need to be ongoing and not something that is done once and then left alone.
One challenge to success in taxonomy and metadata standards is getting people in the organization to understand that a taxonomy is a living breathing entity. Products change, markets change, customer needs, competition, technologies, solutions, approaches, and so on, are all evolving. We use new terms all the time. Old terms (remember "information superhighway"?) are continually going out of style or simply no longer applicable or descriptive enough.
When we work with organizations to develop taxonomies, after we go through the process, they suddenly realize that getting the organization to use the result of the effort is ongoing in and of itself. So we need to develop a change management, update, and roll out process. We need to think about ongoing governance and how managing the taxonomy fits in with other enterprise standards and change processes.
Asking when the taxonomy will be complete is akin to asking when the organization will be done with sales. Or marketing. Or product development. Or manufacturing. Nothing stays static in business. Why would the taxonomy be static?
The question becomes how changes will be incorporated and how often the taxonomy needs to be refreshed.
Changes can come from a number of places. The following are typical change triggers:
Those are the triggers. What are the sources for new terms?
Suggestions and requests can be submitted by:
One of the most interesting areas of research that we are exploring is the integration of social tagging (or folksonomies) with structured taxonomies. Basically, this is a way of harvesting terms so that they can be automatically nominated as taxonomy candidate terms and then reviewed by a taxonomist.
Bottom line is that maintaining the taxonomy is as important as deriving and validating the taxonomy and needs to be performed by someone who understands taxonomy and the implications of changes to the structures used to classify and organize content.
Continue reading "We did a taxonomy last year - so we're all set, right? " »
I just returned from a trip to London with my 11-year old daughter. Once we got over our “Euro-shock” (the exchange rate is around $2 USD to the GBP right now!) we had a great time. We even managed to work in two business meetings about metadata (but I’ll save that story for another day.) There’s a wonderful new book out by the British author Gavin Pretor-Pinney titled The Cloudspotter’s Guide. I had wanted to buy the book for some time before I saw it at Foyles, London ’s premiere bookstore. So I happily purchased my very own Cloudspotter’s Guide to read on my return flight home to Virginia.
The first point in my list of taxonomy issues relates to the definition of taxonomy. Many people have a limited understanding of what a taxonomy is. The following will illustrate the many ways a taxonomy can be represented and applied.
We just ran one of our Taxonomy and Metadata Jumpstart calls - (a free four part series on taxonomy issues - you can write Patrick@earley.com for access to the archive of the call). The first topic was "What is a taxonomy and why do you need one?". Here is a summary of the "what is it" section:
Remember the advice that the Munchkins gave Dorothy about the best way to get to OZ? It was simple, right? “You just follow the Yellow Brick road.”
Firms and organizations often ask “What are the essential considerations associated with purchasing a digital asset management system?” (Translation: How do I keep from getting lost once I set out for the land of Digital Asset Management?) That’s easy too; the Yellow Brick road to DAM is “return on investment”. This post explores the implications of metadata and taxonomy on ROI.
Throughout my experiences with building enterprise class DAM systems it never fails that I run into a person or group that doesn't understand metadata. In some cases I run into project teams that don't even know the definition of metadata.
