ExpertExperience - Digital Asset Management Community

The Metadata Value Proposition

2008-05-16T14:27:31-04:00

It was great to see so many familiar faces at the Henry Stewart DAM show in NYC! Over the last three years there has been a dramatic increase in interest about metadata. A commonly heard phrase at the conference was "It's all about the metadata". This phrase rings true but what does it mean in terms of cost versus value?

Many companies purchase their CMS or DAM system with the expectation that the software expenditure will translate into new revenue streams or cost savings. While content management software is the first step, it cannot produce any financial benefit unless the digital assets being managed can be leveraged to benefit the business objectives. The first step in leveraging a digital asset is ensuring that the asset has been "described" in a way that supports the business model. Metadata schema's define the specific data fields that describe the asset. A logical question is "How do I know which fields to include in the metadata schema?" Answer: The metadata fields are identified through use case analysis with the people responsible for implementing the various business functions and processes. Use case analysis is the key to success when designing the enterprise metadata model.

Is there software available that can "obliterate" or watermark an image once the usage rights has expired?

2008-05-14T18:23:35-04:00

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?

There are a variety of solutions around watermarking and expiration of images. Considering my role in Product Management at ClearStory, I will answer in regards to our DAM solution, ActiveMedia. I invite all viewer's to post and provide additional stories.

ActiveMedia provides the following related capabilities:

1) Image ingestion with assigned metadata, including (but not limited to) Expiration as a date field
2) Saved Search (for users and for automated worklfows) that identify assets that are reaching or reached their expiration date
3) Automated Workflow (system) tasks that can manipulate the asset to reflect a variety of expiration rules: a) change permissions to the asset to prevent future download of the expired asset; b) create rendition which could apply a watermark (although watermarking is a custom option for us) to the thumbnail plus any/all renditions of the asset; c) change metadata values to reflect the change in status (ie: distribution = private); and d) move the asset to a secure collection in the repository.
4) Project-based workflow that would automatically 'Search' for the expired assets daily and perform the series of automated tasks required to effect the state of an expired asset (any or all of a,b,c,d above).
You might be asking yourself 'why don't you just delete it?'. The answer involves the fact that deleting an asset also deletes the history, versions, etc. We felt this was too dramatic for an automatic action. You can manually search for expired assets (or view them in the archive location) and then delete them accordingly. We felt the user intervention would be preferred.

Finally, to speak to your final comment regarding 'where it lives once distributed'. You are correct. We (and I suspect others) have not (yet) solved the problem of expiring assets that have been distributed outside the application (e.g. downloaded or delivered). We are working on future capabilities where the 'tracked' asset, upon expiration, notifies all known users that the asset is expired. However, we are not looking to 'spam' users and right now (in a typical large scale repository) would be the likely result.

Thanks for asking!! LMK if you have further or follow on questions

Expert Experience Breakfast Panel at Henry Stuart New York May 2008

2008-04-27T22:52:54-04:00

The Expert Experience Breakfast Panel
The Breakfast Panel will be conducting this year’s kickoff breakfast event in the form of a game show titled “Are you smarter than a DAM Expert?”

Participants will partner with our Experts to correctly answer questions related to digital asset management practices and principles. Similar to the popular television game show, contestants will be offered increasingly valuable prizes including attendee survival kits (gift bags), video ipods, and digital cameras. The session is open to registered attendees and begins promptly at 8:30 am on Monday, May 12th.

Faceted Seaching

2008-03-27T09:20:42-04:00

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?

In both cases the user was forced to "guess" at the metadata terms attached to the digital content. If the user "guessed" the metadata value correctly, digital assets were presented. If an incorrect guess was made? ... Well, we all know the answer only to well.

"Faceted Search" solves the guessing game problem. Faceted search has been around for a long time but only recently has it started to be better understood (and leveraged) in the world of content management. You can think of faceted searching as a technique for visually refining a digital asset search. Here how it works; Facets (general categories) are usually listed in a window pane on the left side of the screen. Displayed under each facet are specifc metadata tag values associated with the digital assets (the quantity of assets with the specific tag value are also displayed). Clicking on any displayed metadata tag value refines the visual search result display to include only assets that have the same common tag.

The "search box", while appropriate for expert users who already have a good understanding of the metadata values, is less useful to a casual user. The advantage of the faceted search approach is the user's ability to see the metadata values interactively as the search is refined.

There's a place for both approaches in today's content management world. Faceted search is a good example of "thinking outside of the search box".