Maintaining your document language: ensuring the longevity of your DAM solution

All too often, digital asset management projects fail or falter due to poor implementation of the documentation language. Indeed, failing to maintain or develop the documentation structure will quickly degrade the quality of searches. Indexing will take too much time for contributors, and the entire tool will then be called into question. At the start of the project, documentary support will meet this need, but the structure produced must then be maintained.

Here are some key steps to take if you find yourself in this situation, or to anticipate these situations for the long life of your photo library software.

DAM solution: continuous assessment

As we know, implementing a DAM project takes a lot of energy. This is particularly true of the consultation phase, interviewing stakeholders and identifying needs (topics covered in our dedicated video).

However, once the system is up and running, it is essential to remain vigilant.

In fact, it is at the beginning of the media library’s operation that the most changes and adjustments will need to be made. This is also a period of change and familiarisation. It is therefore important to distinguish between change management and the logical evolution of your document management system.

Users are also discovering a document management solution and are therefore often reluctant to give feedback. They do not necessarily know how to differentiate between a tool failure (which they do not identify as a failure of the document structure) and a usage habit that needs to be adopted.

It is rare to find projects where everything has been thought out in advance and which do not undergo any changes a few weeks or months after going live.

It is up to you to stay alert to feedback from users and contributors, but also to the statistics provided by Ephoto Dam, which are good indicators. This will make it easier to adopt the tool and will address many issues. When this is not the case, friction builds up and reduces the legitimacy of the tool.

After all, your business is constantly evolving, so your documentation language must evolve with it.

Diverse digital assets: tailored indexing

Obviously, a digital asset management solution aggregates many different types of digital files. A common mistake is to consider indexing as a single block that must be carried out systematically according to a fixed procedure.

However, Ephoto Dam allows you to:

• multi-thesaurus management
• the creation of indexing templates according to digital resources (photos of works, photos of events, etc.)
• differentiate the display of fields according to the nature of the media (sound, video, photo, document).

Indexing should therefore be viewed from the outset as a collaborative effort, in which the sum of everyone’s contributions will give meaning to your audiovisual collection.

A heritage department will certainly have high indexing requirements. But it is often willing to invest the time because it benefits from it for its own use. It may therefore be necessary to index certain collections in a common documentary language of medium granularity and at the same time allow certain departments to go further via a dedicated thesaurus.

Presenting the indexing fields specific to a video collection to your videographers seems obvious, but it is often overlooked. However, this allows the indexer to focus their efforts where the added value is greatest. There is no point in presenting them with the ‘Inventory No.’ field, which is useful for heritage, when they are producing drone videos of your community’s events, for example.

The key to your document organisation

Halfway between document structure and workflow establishment, using document language features wisely also helps ensure the longevity of your tool.

Documentary policy will enable you to establish triggers for reviewing and updating your digital photo library so that it always remains closely aligned with your users’ needs and your business activities. Feel free to check out our webinar on this topic!