From Digital Asset Management and Museums – An Introduction, the Canadian Heritage Information Network states:
Digital assets are the result of institutional activities in content development, media production and digitization and can represent a substantial investment in time and expertise.
As the volume of digital resources created and maintained by museums increases, their management becomes increasingly important if staff are to easily retrieve and use them.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) includes activities associated with the creation, cataloguing, storing, retrieving and backing up of these assets. The purpose of DAM is to integrate best practices within workflows to improve access to resources and make them available for reuse. DAM could be as simple as adopting file-naming and storage conventions so that assets can be easily tracked, located and retrieved for different purposes. Many of us are familiar with the frustration of trying to locate the most recent version of a digital file; DAM can help to avoid these scenarios by establishing consistent file management practices within an organization.
DAM is normally undertaken to improve efficiency in all of the following areas:
- File Management
- Metadata Management
- Workflow
- Policy Tracking and Enforcement
- Access