New Feature Article – Who Needs a DAM Librarian?


Deborah Fanslow has contributed the first part in a series of DAM News feature articles in response to David Diamond’s piece for CMSWire: Library Science, Not Library Silence:

“After reading David’s article, I was inspired to do a little informal research. I was curious…when did the topic of librarians enter the DAM conversation? Have any vendors other than Picturepark published any advocacy on behalf of librarians in DAM? What do DAM consultants and DAM practitioners have to say about information professionals? As it turns out, there has been quite a bit of advocacy published.” [Read More]

The article continues with a formidable piece of research which includes numerous links to items from a wide range of sources (including commercial as well as academic publications).  It’s obvious that Deborah has put a lot of effort into finding examples of advocacy in support of utilising the expertise of librarians in DAM initiatives.  Although she describes her list as ‘not exhaustive’ I think it’s probably about the best example anyone is likely to get for some time to come.

I am looking forward to reading the follow-up articles in this series and it should start to address some of the issues raised by David.  Deborah and Emily Kolvitz also put together the DAM Directory which is equally diligently researched and anyone who hasn’t seen it already would be well advised to take a look and bookmark it for future reference.

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2 Comments

  • Both Deb and Emily have been generating good content lately. Good for them!

  • What an excellent piece Ralph! Thanks for sharing David’s article. I attended the internet librarian in 2013 as well, and this is definitely an accurate thought to come out of that conference. It takes people to do the do. Librarians can be and should be the biggest proponents of information professionals and digital asset management. I think librarians need to be more active in this arena. Maybe the problem is that a big part of the librarians population is older and my not realize the importance of digital assets and where the future is going in terms of the quantity of material. Everyone says librarians will be obsolete, but the influx of information is changing and the type we have to work with is digital. It makes perfect sense to couple DAM and library science.

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