Enterprise Digital Asset Management System Pilot: Lessons Learned

Abstract

Enterprise digital asset management (DAM) systems are beginning to be explored in higher education, but little information about their implementation issues is available. This article describes the University of Michigan’s investigation of managing and retrieving rich media assets in an enterprise DAM system. It includes the background of the pilot project and descriptions of its infrastructure and metadata schema. Two case studies are summarized—one in healthcare education, and one in teacher education and research. Experiences with five significant issues are summarized: privacy, intellectual ownership, digital rights management, uncataloged materials backlog, and user interface and integration with other systems.