WebDAM Add New Taxonomy Features – More DAM Vendors Now Taking Controlled Vocabularies Seriously


One of our featured DAM vendors, WebDAM solutions have added some new features to their Cloud DAM system.  The new facilities are based around taxonomies and the controlled vocabulary concept (choosing pre-determined terms rather than narrative free text).

Building on one of our most popular features, controlled vocabulary, we are excited to add hierarchical support and an easy-to-use taxonomy builder! A great deal of WebDAM users rely on consistent keywording from implementing a controlled vocabulary to keep data consistent and assets findable.  Now, this feature has been even further developed to include hierarchies.  With these enhancements your keyword list can include defined categories that keywords can be grouped by.  Use the new taxonomy builder to create, organize, and group your keywords right in WebDAM!  We’ve enriched this design to include drag and drop functionality paired with quick inline editing to streamline workflows.” [Read More]

I might need to take issue with their opening line of their blog entry though:

What are the three most important words in DAM (forgive the cliché)? Consistency, consistency, and CONSISTENCY!

Surely, metadata, metadata and METADATA are the three most important words in DAM?  I guess that doesn’t work quite so well given the content of the piece.

Setting aside my linguistic pedantry, it is encouraging to see some more DAM vendors taking the whole CV concept seriously these days.  I do recall many arguments in the past with sales reps (and DAM developers who had been dragged along for sales meetings) where the necessity to add these features in had to be explained along with long-winded clarifications of why it was often a little more complex than just drop-down menus or checkboxes with fixed ranges of terms.  In no small part can this be be attributed to the work of  David Riecks in bringing controlled vocabularies to the DAM community’s attention.

Based on the article written by Ralph last week about metadata education, we are working on a feature item where we plan to describe how you can derive the core metadata needed to catalogue images in particular and that will include a section on vocabularies (which may, itself, become a further article).  Watch this space for more details (to use another cliché).

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