Digital Asset Management consists of tasks and decisions surrounding
ingesting, annotating, cataloguing, storage and retrieval of digital
assets, such as digital photographs, animations, videos and music. Digital
asset management systems are computer software and/or hardware systems
that aid in the process of digital asset management. The term "digital
asset management" (DAM) also refers to the protocol for downloading,
renaming, backing up, rating, grouping, archiving, optimizing, maintaining,
thinning, and exporting files. "There are two primary types of DAM software:
browsers and cataloging software. A browser reads information from a
file but does not store it separately. Cataloging software stores information
in its own separate file, however, the software and the catalog document
it makes are distinct from the photos themselves."
If you have been around the content management field for some time
you might have read attempts from various writers to define and clarify
the difference among solutions described by the those innumerable industry
acronyms: DM, DAM, WCM, KM, DRM, etc. Unfortunately significant confusion
still exists, particularly about the role of Digital Asset Management
(DAM) systems. After all, aren't "assets" really just files? So couldn't
we use the same Document Management (DM) system that we use to manage
all our other files? Well, the marketplace has spoken and its answer
is, "no." It turns out that managing digital assets -- while in some
ways similar to managing documents -- constitutes a specific business
problem that requires specialized software. This article will contrast
DAM systems with DM systems. Along the way, you should learn what content
management skills and knowledge you could transfer between DM and DAM
projects, as well as what is truly unique about managing rich media
assets as opposed to text or imaged documents.