Who Needs a DAM Librarian? Part I: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

In this four-part feature article, Deborah Fanslow, one of the editors of The DAM Directory and an MLIS qualified librarian herself, answers David Diamond’s call for librarians to be more vocal about the benefits they can bring to the Digital Asset Management field.  A PDF copy of this article is also available and part two is now published.

 

 

In Library Science, Not Library Silence, David Diamond proclaimed that the skills of information professionals are sorely needed in the DAM field. In no uncertain terms, he initiated a call to action, urging librarians to “wake up and smell the marketing:”

“It’s time for you information professionals out there to start telling a story that actually interests us….Come out of the library closet and show us how fabulous you are. Sell us on the value you provide. Make us beg to involve you and fear losing you. Market yourselves.” [Read More]

This is not the first time that David has advocated on behalf of librarians. Last year, he sat on a panel with librarians Deb Hunt and Ruth Kneale at the Internet Librarian Conference, where he shared the most common “DAM Killers” – unclear goals; lack of ownership and decision making; and lack of training, follow up, and ongoing evaluation. He stressed that these areas represent key opportunities for information professionals to market their skills. He even offered marketing advice when connecting with organizations in need of DAM services:

“Make yourself visible on their stage. Do effective content marketing: make it clear what you do and why it matters. Contribute content to guest blogs….Speak their language and feel their pain. Stay benefits-focused and describe a world that’s better and attainable….What users need is more interesting than what you know. Tell them how much better DAM will be with you involved.” [Read More]

Of course, by the nature of his job, David has a vested interest in seeing adequate resources (human and otherwise) dedicated to DAM system implementations in order to ensure successful outcomes. Successful implementations make vendors look good. But in fact, all DAM professionals – vendors, consultants, and stakeholders within organizations engaged in DAM implementations – must realize their own benefits in achieving that goal. Supporting DAM implementations (and ongoing digital strategy) properly sets the stage for success on all sides.

In search of greener pastures

One reason that many information professionals haven’t been louder in marketing their skills within the DAM field is because they have simply been unaware of the existence of DAM as a parallel career opportunity within the corporate sector. Although, there are some signs that change is on the horizon.

As newly minted librarians and archivists continue to face the reality of an oversaturated market within traditional cultural heritage organizations – despite the continuing prediction of librarian shortages – the word has gotten out. Academic Library and Information Science (LIS) departments are now increasingly promoting “alternative” careers outside of libraries, museums, and archives. This has resulted in the recent expansion of faculty, curricula, and professional development offerings to include courses designed for application within the corporate sector. It’s now common to see courses such as knowledge management, competitive intelligence, and data curation on the menu for many LIS degrees.

Notably, there has also been a recent increase in the number of dedicated DAM courses offered by higher education institutions:

To my knowledge, the program at King’s College London still stands as the only Master’s program available in DAM. Although the courses at Simmons and Pratt maintain a focus on DAM within the cultural heritage sector, the courses offered at San José State University and UCLA present a broader perspective with the inclusion of DAM within the corporate sector.

Where’s the DAM advocacy?

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:

2005

2011

2012

2013

2014

Although this list is by no means exhaustive, one can still recognize the significant increase in advocacy within the past few years by information professionals currently working in DAM (both consultants and DAM practitioners), as well as consultants and other professionals with non-information science backgrounds. Advocacy has occured within scholarly journals, books, and blogs, as well as at industry conferences and meetings within both the DAM and LIS professional communities. Editors of DAM related publications have helped spread the word, and certainly social media has been an active advocacy channel as well. Universities (not surprisingly, those located near large cities with the most DAM jobs) are adding DAM related courses to their curricula, and information professionals are becoming more aware of DAM as a career option.

As past President of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), Deb Hunt engaged in significant advocacy for librarians in DAM on numerous occasions. Traditionally, corporate libraries and information centers have been considered “special libraries” within the LIS field. It is refreshing to see that Deb’s work in the special librarian community has helped spread the word about DAM as a career path for librarians.

I was especially pleased to discover that Picturepark is not the only DAM vendor that has advocated for involving librarians in DAM projects – both Extensis and Canto gave a small plug for librarians within their educational materials. Although I’m sure there are smaller references to the value of librarian services in DAM by vendors (please do give me a shout if you know of any), such advocacy is not yet widely published and promoted. Still, despite the threat of extended sales cycles, it is encouraging to see more vendors focusing on educating their customers as part of their marketing strategy and giving credence to the need for information professionals in DAM.

Particularly telling is that DAM consultants – the seasoned professionals with the broadest experience in formulating digital strategies and implementing DAM systems across a variety of industries and verticals – are so vocal on the critical need for the expertise of information management professionals. This would not be unexpected from consultants with information science backgrounds looking to market these skills to prospective clients. However, the same advocacy can be heard loud and clear from consultants with backgrounds in any number of fields as well.

If anyone should know the formula for DAM success, surely it would be the seasoned consultants. And what they are advising across the board is the need for the information professionals to help organizations get their DAM strategy and DAM systems in order.

Answering the call

Although advocacy has increased and awareness of DAM as a parallel career is rising within the LIS community, David is right. Information professionals need to kick it up a notch.

In order to increase awareness of the need for information professionals in DAM among organizations and practices in need of our information management skills (vendors, integrators, analysts, consultants, and companies drowning in data – know of any who aren’t?), we have to do our part in first helping organizations answer the question, why do I need a digital asset manager? and in explaining why a DAM system needs to be maintained. We need to start selling our expertise in taming what David calls “DAMS Gone Wild” – and better yet, how we can help prevent these types of misadventures and the business pain they cause in the first place.

Within the next three articles, I will respond to David’s call to action with some content marketing. I’ll tell the story of information professionals and the value they can bring to DAM by answering the following questions:

  • What is an information professional?
  • What DAM skills do information professionals bring to the table?

And most importantly for DAM vendors and DAM implementers,

  • How can information professionals help me solve my DAM problems?

Read part two of Deborah’s article here: https://digitalassetmanagementnews.org/features/who-needs-a-dam-librarian-part-ii-information-professionals-a-field-guide/

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8 Comments

  • David Diamond
    October 10, 2014 at 8:01 pm

    No article I’ve ever read regarding Digital Asset Management has moved me the way this one has. Not to get all mushy, but I feel like this fight is finally finding its voice. DAM just works better with an information professional at the helm, and the more people who understand that, the better off we’ll all be.

    As Deb points out, I have a vested interest seeing Picturepark DAM systems succeed because that’s where my paycheck comes from. But this is bigger than Picturepark’s success; this is about the success of the entire DAM industry. There are a million metaphors that help describe why DAM benefits from an info pro’s guidance, so I won’t offer another here. I’ll just be happy when the rest of the DAM vendors out there learn enough about what we’re selling so that they’ll start to understand and promote this too.

    Our marketing strategy at Picturepark is to sell DAM success, not DAM systems. I know that sounds trite, but unless the rate of DAM success across the industry increases to the point where would-be DAM buyers are less hesitant about the value a DAM can offer, our industry will continue to be squeezed out by the increasing noise made by CMS and Marketing Automation. This is why Picturepark focus on education at Picturepark and why we also keep trying to encourage information pros to join the conversation. (We even added an New York-based information pro agency as a partner.)

    We’re a drug company that has realized that over-the-counter sales are not suitable for our product. We need physicians. Otherwise, people will continue to pop Viagra, thinking it’s the cure for “not tonight; I have a headache.” When you get things backward, even good DAM can go wrong.

    My god, it’s true: I can’t write without metaphors. I see that now. ;)

    Thank you Deb and DAM News for this piece.

    David Diamond
    Director of Global Marketing
    Picturepark

  • Ralph Windsor
    October 10, 2014 at 8:12 pm

    >My god, it’s true: I can’t write without metaphors. I see that now. ;)

    You don’t want to get into those metaphors, David, it’s the start of a slippery slope. You’ll be moving on to the hard stuff like analogies and similes next ;)

    Seriously though, it’s a great article by Deb, we’re very lucky to have her contribution and I’m glad you like it too.

  • Ricky Patten
    October 13, 2014 at 2:19 am

    It is interesting to note the cross over between librarians for DAM projects and DAM for librarians. We deal with several government organisations who have implemented DAM with the project lead being taken by the library department. I can provide definite feedback that these projects are much preferred by my team as the communications with the customer is much easier, “They understand what we are asking them for”.
    Be great to work with more librarians.
    Thank you
    Ricky Patten
    DataBasics

  • Demian Hess
    October 13, 2014 at 11:52 am

    As a professional working in the DAM space, I second the call for trained librarians to lead and support DAM projects. I would love to see more cross over between librarians working to create institutional repositories and enterprises implementing DAM. Enterprises with complex information management needs should recruit from library science professionals because they have the expertise to identify metadata requirements, develop and manage taxonomies, identify search use cases, create asset acquisition and retention policies, and provide user support (to name just a few key areas). In short, librarians would bring rigor and a rich set of theory and standards to DAM practice. I look forward to reading the rest of Deb’s series.

  • Eric Reber
    October 24, 2014 at 3:33 am

    Speaking as a librarian who has been working in DAM for the last 3 years, it was the only viable career path for me. As the Digital Asset Archivist for GSU, I am the authority. They brought me onboard specifically to vet vendors and implement a new DAM system for their PR department. Had I remained in a library I would not have been as well compensated and I would have continued to be the low man on the totem pole of an entrenched and stagnant workforce that has yet to see this shortage of librarians I was told of in school (VSU 2010). There is a need in new media for our skill sets that does not involve shelf reading!

  • alissa gonzalez
    December 9, 2016 at 8:25 pm

    As a current MLIS student (SJSU) there has been a huge influx of digital and informational courses and teachings within the past couple years. It seems this need for information librarians specifically trained in these fields has not only been heard but has found its way into MLIS programs. Again there is a major difference in the training of future librarians that go through the MLIS programs, however the different pathways that the program allows can development a highly trained and proficient group of digital librarians that can lead DAM systems.

  • Anna-Carin U'Ren
    January 13, 2017 at 10:09 pm

    I am also a current MLIS student at SJSU, due to be graduating in May, 2017. I didn’t even know what DAM was until I applied for an internship as a Digital Asset Specialist at a company that makes medical devices, and now I am helping launch a new DAM system and coming up with a keyword taxonomy. Needless to say, I have a lot to learn about DAM, and have been watching any and every webinar about the subject (thank you David Diamond for all of your excellent Picturepark webinars!) I am also looking into the Advanced Certificate offered by SJSU in DAM. I was fortunate to attend DAM LA in 2016, and continue to search out educational materials to supplement my on-the-job experiences. I am happy to learn that the skills of information professionals can be applied in in some DAM good ways!

  • Leanna Pagano
    May 20, 2021 at 11:49 pm

    I appreciated Fanslow beginning this piece by displaying the need for information professionals to market themselves to remind everyone of the value they provide. This statement particularly resonates with me in my current role as a librarian and graduate student, while working in an academic library. Since I constantly need to explain I don’t simply “read all day”.
    Fanslow notes Diamond’s interest in “seeing adequate resources (human and otherwise)”, and agrees all these components play a role in success. I agree with Fanslow’s argument that librarians may not realize this is an option. However, Fanslow fails to mention that many libraries are suffering from the lack of human and “otherwise” resources. Although it would be great to apply the skills of a librarian to DAM, finding investment (time and financial) is difficult. It will be interesting to see how the roles of librarians change as more processes move towards automation and allow for human and time resources to be reallocated. Thus allowing librarians to apply their knowledge into DAM.

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