Implementing a digital asset management (DAM) system can be challenging. Many factors pose hurdles of varying degrees: asset ingestion, building the database, relevant and descriptive metadata, to name a few. It is key to make the assets descriptive enough to make them worth the time to search and find them. Image & Data Manager brought this information to our attention in their article, “Designing a Controlled Vocabulary for DAM.”
There is no limit as to the criteria by which we organize data. Your descriptors can include genre, subject, visual clues, geographic and time spatial clues, and synonyms. Search results can be enhanced by the clues we leave on the data.
Your best source for descriptors is a controlled vocabulary, such as a taxonomy. A strong standards-based taxonomy is one with true integrity. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ISO/ANSI/NISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
