Forecasts
predictions of the cutting edge
Main Streaming DAMS
Main Streaming DAMS It was due to happen. As soon as more people began to appreciate the "assets" that were sitting around in various repositories, they would then demand the ability to use them. That is what DAMS do right? They make digital assets accessible so that more people can use them more efficiently and effectively. However, there is an inherent problem in this. When you expand the range of users, you expand the associated information that users will want. A PR person creating a press release will require different supporting data than an exhibit designer creating a display or than a student writing a paper, a researcher developing background information, a hobbyist trying seeking that unique example, a teacher preparing a lecture, or even the CEO selling the company policy. As the digital assets become part of an organization's day-to-day functioning, the image becomes just one "bit" of information that a user may want. The other "bits" might be project/object information or personnel/creator information or client/owner information or gee maybe even subject information. This is a lot of information.
If you try to add all the information that all your users might want to your DAM, it will become bloated with information. Another option is that a larger repository, such as a universityıs library or a corporationıs content management system, absorbs your DAM information. Though then you run the risk that the expertise that has gone into creating the DAM may get lost in the soup. So how do you preserve all the data that you have carefully created. Some people have kept their DAMS intact, but linked to their other information systems with "buttons² that take you to the other system, but that is cumbersome. There are also plug-ins and modules that the conventional information management systems have developed, but even with these the different information sources are not, as integrated as many of our users are going to want.
Hope is on the horizon. As you may have noticed from you DIG Updates, integration does seem to be the growing theme in digital imaging, as so in information management. In June Interwoven (content management) acquired Mediabin (DAM) and now has just merged with iManage ( collaboration). The collaborative technologies are what I think will be the key to truly integrating DAMS into the mainstream of organizationıs information systems.
While I have been advocating for some time that we use the web as the interface between different repositories, I have not been fully confident of that solution. It would not try to blend all the information in one pot. Thus, each repository would preserve its standards and practices that are best for its data. However, what about the imaging? Then came powerful image servers such as by Equilibrium and Adobe to answer that question. Now collaboration technologies actually integrates the information from the various repositories into various work environments.
With collaboration, you would not only integrate data from several sources on one screen, but allow people to interact with it and share information across disciplines. Every project, be it a new product, exhibit or class has several contributors. For a class it might be the lecturer, an assistant and the image curator. The Assistant might pull research data and images. Then she would post them to the team page for the lecturer to review. The Lecturer might ask the curator if there were another image like.... or did he know similar examples. This would all be done on through a web interface. Think of the possibilities if we could preserve our standards and data structure but still be smoothly integrated into the other information.
hmmm one might call it image integration.
Image
Integration
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