Specifying Selecting and Implementing Digital Asset Management and Distribution Systems

Peter Kilborn | 06/06/2008 | Digitization

Seminar, Wednesday 4 June 2008

This seminar was organised by the UK Publishers Association’s Digital Publishing Forum in collaboration with the Centre for Publishing at University College London. It was attended by around 45 delegates from a wide spectrum of companies.

The seminar was introduced by Hugh Look and Sue Sparks, consultants with Rightscom, a London-based consultancy well-known in the media world. They emphasised that, against a background of growing complexity and proliferation of digital as well as physical products and a need to keep track not only of where assets were but also what rights and permissions attached to them, larger companies could no longer expect to depend on the memory or private systems operated by experienced individuals.

The distinction was emphasised between the so-called DADs (Digital Asset Distributors) and DAMs (Digital Asset Management systems), though the responsibilities of each are not clear-cut. Typically DAMs are internal to publishers and are used to store and track all the components of their titles, from the print-ready PDF to the individual source files which have been generated in the editorial, production and design processes, together with adequate metadata. By contrast, DADs are outward-facing, converting or massaging content in the DAM system ready for distribution to the marketplace.

Many publishers have been slow to commit themselves to either DAMs or DADs. This was attributed to concerns about cost and potential business disruption. Unlike many business investments there was very little history in the way of models adopted successfully elsewhere and few people around with the necessary skills or breadth of understanding.

There were three options for publishers: to start from scratch; to buy a core package and customise it; or to outsource the whole operation to a subcontractor. Before doing any of these, however, it was essential to identify existing assets and start building metadata to support them.

The first option (starting from scratch) can be expensive and painful, and a number of attempts to do so have failed. However, outsourcing does not take away any of the problems either: just as outsourcing physical distribution does not change anything in the way the core publishing functions operate, nor does outsourcing digital distribution to DADs. DADs as a supplier type are still in their infancy and their roots lie in a variety of places: typesetting or text conversion, printing, publishing itself or technical solution providers. Publishers should look for the most appropriate fit for their particular needs.

It was emphasised strongly that any move made in this direction, however, would inevitably involve some business re-engineering and consequently needed support and commitment from the very top of the business hierarchy

Andy Williams of Cambridge University Press was currently working with Rightscom on a DAM project. CUP had first embarked on such a project in 1996, though it was subsequently abandoned, but they have some experience in this area: they have set up a Content Services department and operated an XML repository since 2004. The current project was initiated in early 2007, would be going out to tender with suppliers later in the year, and was scheduled to go live in 2009.
So far much of the effort had gone into scoping the project: dividing responsibility between DAM and DAD, deciding whether to use the DAM as a storage vault or develop a full XML production workflow, establishing how both complete titles but also chapters and other components would be identified.

A key point was that all assets had rights attached and that meant that every title and all multiple components needed to be checked for copyright clearance. Rights were an integral part of all digital trading and awareness of their importance needed to be communicated to all parts of the business. Clear and accurate metadata was essential throughout the publishing process to enable content to be readily accessed.
It was obvious that CUP had embarked on an ambitious project which had a high risk attached. Andy Williams emphasised that it needed the assurance of support at the top level of management and of financial commitment; and a fairly radical re-engineering of many business processes.

Graham Bell presented the experience of HarperCollins and demonstrated the DAM system (North Plains Telescope Enterprise) which they had implemented. This had replaced very primitive manual systems of storage but was now a very effective business tool. All book components were stored, including print-ready PDFs and source files, with metadata both for the product and for the assets which it comprised. The system gathered files in logical groups and had a powerful search mechanism to enable users – subject to strict access controls – to find files quickly and easily. However, he warned that such a system needed to be built to allow for substantial growth as digital content increased in volume very rapidly.

The prime criterion for selecting a DAM supplier was stability and longevity. In the present state of development, all the focus was on putting things into a digital warehouse, whereas the benefit would not be apparent until it was used to extract content, perhaps some years in the future. And that was the problem: Graham concluded by saying that it was impossible to justify the investment using normal ROI criteria; but that it was a price that had to be paid to ensure companies’ survival in the coming years.

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