Higher Ed DAM Success with Planning, Access, Metadata
1. Making digital asset management (DAM)
a success for higher education
How to plan, structure and utilize
digital asset management solutions
October 8, 2013
www.widen.com
2. Corey Chimko
Global DAM administrator,
Cornell University Photography Department
Who’s talking
www.widen.com
3. Who is Widen?
Digital Asset
Management
Premedia
A comprehensive
understanding
of the asset
lifecycle
4. 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
6. 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?
7. 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
8. 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
9. System setup checklist
The checklist helps to project timelines and determine which
processes are priorities.
11. 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
16. 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?
17. 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
21. 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?
22. 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
23. 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
29. 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
30. 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
31. 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
33. Thank you for attending today!
Contact Widen:
marketing@widen.com
See our blog posts:
blog.widen.com
Join us on LinkedIn:
Linkedin.com/company/
widen-enterprises
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
