During my time in the creative services and web technology industries, a point of frustration has been that a lot of potentially productive energy is squandered as practitioners argue about whether a solution is one or more of the following:
- Web Content Management (WCM) or
- Digital Asset Management (DAM) or
- Enterprise Content Management (ECM) or
- Learning Content Management (LCM) or
- Some Other Acronym (SOA)
So that we may bypass such distractions, let me say the following:
-
- All digital assets are content; however…
- Not all content can be considered an asset.
- Content must provide organizational value to be considered digital asset.
That being said, my question is what makes a digital liability?
There are many attributes about a content item that can diminish its value. These are a few that come to mind:
- Digital master is of insufficient resolution, improper color space, or inadequate frame rate (for video).
- Content is improperly described by metadata.
- Multiple replicas (or approximations) of a content item are stored many different locations. This can include copies nested in files system directories or stored in offline media.
- Organizational technologies or processes don’t provide adequate reuse/repurposing opportunities.
- Inconsistent modifications among language derivatives of content items.
- Files where renditions, or proxies become detached from their source files
- Inadequate archival policy.
- Compound content (from  InDesign/Quark/Word, etc.) that is ‘unaware’ of the locations of its supporting files such as photos and illustrations.
In short, if your content can’t be found, used, transformed, or shared then it is a digital liability.