Digital Asset Management

Publishing news still means evaluating what is worth to be “in the news”. Therefore pieces of information are gathered. The sources for story-starters are traditionally news agencies, TV, broadcasting and today of course the internet providing a large variety of new sources.

All those pieces which today are usually provided in digital representation, can be called assets. So it is more than usefulto bundle and stream all these pieces into ones system.

For users (i.e. people working on publishing news) it is very efficient to have just one tool for reseaching their main sources.

The second main aspect is to foster the creation of efficient workflows. The de Pers Groep (DPP) has set up a great production system, covering all steps from the integration of information sources to specialized editor clients and further on to a seamless integration with the production system.

Finally a process for automated archiving is triggered. The solid foundation of such a system is a stable and fast enterprise class DAM providing open interfaces to connect all the workflow components and applications publisher usually work with. Basically, a DAM like dio:content helps tailoring an integrated, efficient production system, connecting workflows and applications which hitherto often existed as isolated islands.

How is DAM different from a database?

A database is an essential part of a DAM. Like with any other system, a “pure” database is perfect to store information of any kind and doing the math to shuffle it around. A DAM is something on top of a database: First aim is to provide a convenient view onto all the “drowned” pieces of data, helping to convert them into useful information. Editors usually do not want to learn a complex query language and work with command line tools, thus intuitive search interfaces need to be provided.

The presentation of information should be adaptable to a user’s needs - e.g. searching for articles: Do you prefer just to browse the headlines and read the whole article for interesting headlines? Do you prefer reading abstracts, automatically created by the DAM? Would you like to find matching articles, images or videos on a click? Or is it more suitable to browse information already clustered to topics and sorted by category? All this is DAM-logic helping to get a grip on the vast streams and archives of data ? helping to turn them into useful information.

What benefits do users get from DAM?

A DAM should be able to do a balancing act: there are different kinds of users. Some would like to work with very simple search patterns, like “show the latest images” to find a strong image making up a story. Would prefer to search a specific article from the archive, and so need to apply far more complex search patterns.

Both groups strongly benefit when pointed to additional, matching information along the way, arranged in a useful and easy-to-use manner. Futhermore, DAMs should provide a convenient way to interact with existing systems and applications. This means integrating into heterogeneous IT environments, so from the IT department?s point of view a browser based solution is desirable.

What is the future role of DAM for the publishing industry

Integration and conditioning.