My name is Bernard Kane, and I am a photographer of 35 years standing. I first worked in film media of course, and made the transition to a digital-only workflow in 1998 or 99. My career has been based in photojournalism, and so my work for my university reflects that to a much greater degree than others before me. I try to capture what is there, and prefer available light. It captures the actual moment rather than what I think the moment needs. This attitude is indicated in my personal artwork, which is also well received.
I first worked in Photoshop 2.5, and have migrated, along with the rest of the industry, to CS 5.1, and soon CS 6, as soon as my university sees the need and has the budget.
Which brings me to my first point: Many of you are aware of the budgetary difficulties within California. The CSU system, 23 campuses statewide, the world’s largest university system, has suffered budget cuts of historic enormity. We are at 1999 budget levels in 1999 dollars but with 90,000 more students than before. And even in these difficult budget times, my university has found the money for webDAM.
I inherited this cloud from my predecessor. He actually did not implement it or set it up before he retired, but he was involved in the purchase. The original intent was to use webDAM as a place that the many different constituencies of CSULA could go and get their images free of charge, subject to university policy and approval.
I did not have the opportunity to create, before launch, the steps needed to craft a highly organized webdam management. It was done for me, and I did not like the way it was done. I had to backtrack and redo all the images, folder organization, keywords, and tags now used.
Our problem as a university is really a dilemma: how to promote the autonomy of the various working units of the university and support them with images and at the same time control the usage so it conforms with University standards? These two things are indeed at odds with one another, and it is my job as webdam administrator to justify the two.
I tackled the problem from the user side first. I want our community to know about webdam and use it extensively. I want them to view it as a valuable resource and to rely upon it for their entire image needs. I talk about it nearly every time I am out on assignment. I spread the word, and invite them to explore this resource.
Then, I have tried to make it intuitive to their needs. I organized the hierarchy of galleries and folders into nearly the same structure as the University phonebook. Simple. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Lastly, I make a lot of folders with names that reflect the items within, and more importantly, the event I covered.
Image 2. Folders
Image 3. Nested
Image 4. Deep NSS
Lastly, I make a lot of folders with names that reflect the items within, and more importantly, the event I covered.
Image 2. Folders
Image 3. Nested
Image 4. Deep NSS
Lastly, I make a lot of folders with names that reflect the items within, and more importantly, the event I covered.
Image 2. Folders
Image 3. Nested
Image 4. Deep NSS
So, if someone from the College of Natural and Social Sciences is browsing for a photo, they can search the college, their department, or their academic Center. From within that section they can find the specific event related to their browse. (All this of course is from their side of the webdam. My slides are from the admin side).
I make searching as easy as possible through the use of extensive metadata. Every photo has a caption, and all names have titles, departments, organization names, dates, anything and everything that can help my users find what they need. Everything is spelled correctly, and any mistakes in captioning are repaired immediately.
So that is basically it for my efforts for the user. I have the luxury of working with highly educated and intelligent people, used to working within a system, and so knowing my customers is a relatively easy thing. Very little consumer research had to occur. Gotta love that higher edjimication!
The other side, image usage and control, is more difficult. It starts with search.
Having what my many clients need, and having it in a place where they can find it, limits the number of images they need for a project at the very start. It looks like service and organization (and it is), but it also is a great way to helpfully restrict the large shopping cart mentality of “Let’s get a lot and figure it out later”.
I should say here that I am not here for sales of images. I am not looking to increase usage in the same way that a commercial enterprise is. In that case, money itself would limit what people get. I can’t do it that way. I have other strategies.
The strategy I employ first and foremost is user management.
Image 5. Active users
I only have 124 total users. Not including my colleagues in the Office of Public Affairs I have 11 active users, or 9%. Everyone else is deactivated. Not deleted, but prevented from making downloads. They can use webdam to download watermarked images for comping purposes; I don’t have to manage that at all.
Then they can present their design to my department’s executive director – the person responsible for crafting the unity of the University’s brand and public image – for approval, activation of their account, download of their images, and deactivation of their account again.
Another thing I do is gallery permissions by user group name.
I set up my groups so that certain groups have certain permissions. Here you can see that my customers can make downloads, but only after their account has been activated.
One last thing: every user has to abide by the usage agreement. They can a copy of it immediately upon registration, and must agree to it prior to every single download.
Webdam helps me involve my University in finding and getting the images they like and need, frees me from having to create individual and unique copies on CD for their use, gives me a secure and reliable backup for the University, and lets me see who is using the images and when.