Implementing a digital asset management (DAM) system can be challenging. Many factors pose hurdles of varying degrees: asset ingestion, building the database, and relevant and descriptive metadata, to name a few. It is key to make the asset metadata descriptive enough to make it worth the time to search and find the assets. A controlled vocabulary, such as a taxonomy, can be invaluable for this purpose. 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 can 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.
Another tool that can enhance your search experience is 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 ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
