PHILIP SPIEGEL - DAM Ideas

I Can Name That Tune in Three Notes

Good technology should be transparent to the general user, be it an internal team member, partner, client, customer, etc.  It should be invisible and it should just work.  The complexities of how it works and what is happening behind the scenes to make it work shouldn't factor into the user experience.

This should be the same for DAM's.

The DAM ecosystem can be complex and have lots of computing and digital events occurring behind the scenes but the interfaces for the users should be simple, logical and intuitive and the technology "under the hood" should be invisible and not be an obstacle to getting things done.

It's like riding in an elevator, there are electronic and mechanical events occurring in order to get from the lobby to the penthouse but the user just needs to press the appropriate button on a very simple control panel to make it work.

Simplifying the GUI's should be an important part of the design effort. A good DAM can only be successful if users can easily embrace and adapt to the new tool and want to work with it rather than work around it.  I consider the deconstruction of complexity into simpler forms to be key player toward the overall success of a new system.  

Simpler really is better.

If You Are Reading This It May Already Be Too Late!

Film and video archives need to start thinking right now about the state of their physical assets and what they need to do to get them digitized...the clock is ticking!  Do nothing and time, decay and equipment obsolescence will help make these content management decisions for you.

I recognize (coming from the commercial archive world) that there needs to be a compelling business case to help justify the investment other than "because we should."   In the past few days this has been a topic discussed on the AMIA listserv and I offered the notion that the conversation should shift to how  can we, as an industry, address our common technical and financial challenges to bring about a more cost effective approach.

I've been thinking along the lines of a co-op model for digitizing and storage...film and video archives may not have the resources or ability to get this done on their own but if they could buy into a digitizing co-op that offered centralized, standardized services and rates (be it self managed or thru a third party vendor) wouldn't that start to get some movement going?  Why individually chase after the limited equipment, vendors, staff, and slowly disappearing expertise in older media and machines, etc....isn't that more costly than joining together to get this done?  There is savings in volume;  lets tap into that as a group.  I'm sure there are plenty of vendors who would be thrilled to be the industry-wide collective vendor...if we had an effective plan as a group that would help drive down costs further.

I know that this consortium may not work for everyone and that there would be tons of details and differences from archive to archive, collection to collection, but at the end of the day, we all have the same need to encode, digitally store, create and manage metadata and then secure the physical original assets.  If there was a tiered model based on the number of hours, format types, amount of digital storage, etc., then you could buy into and participate to whatever fits your budget and time.  You'd probably get more return from this than doing it completely on your own....without the need to become an expert in things that may be outside of the core competency of being an archive manager.

I recognize that not every archive would want to participate in this but it could the archives version of a Medicare program (maybe ArchiveMediaCare?) that could be available to those that don't have the ability to do this on their own.

The transformation to digital and the secure capture of at risk assets shouldn't be consuming.  This should be liberating and allow us to be better collection managers and stewards of the content. It should be opening new opportunities for using and making available the assets in new ways because it is now available electronically.  Additionally, this co-op could act as a centralized vehicle for resale and re-licensing opportunities to generate revenue...could this be a way of generating dollars to further finance this industry effort?

This may not be something that works for everyone but it may be the option of last resort for others that can't get the resources to do it any other way.

I don't expect this to have all (or even any) of the answers.  My point is simply to say...we know the problem so let's start talking about solutions.