How Museums Can Benefit From Digital Asset Management
Photo: Simon Infanger on Unsplash
The digital transformation of museums isn’t a new challenge. However, it’s one that becomes increasingly important with each year. Rising demand has led many institutions to explore ways of leveraging the latest technologies to manage digital assets in more effective ways.
Organizations across all industries can benefit hugely from a digital asset management system, otherwise known as a DAM. But museums and the entire GLAM industry have an immense supply of collections, stories, assets—all items that can and should be used in and for visitor and digital consumption. Think of DAM as an opportunity.
Let’s dig into why museums benefit from this system.
Why do museums need DAM?
There are many reasons why museums and cultural organizations utilize digital asset management systems.
Consider the efficiency of having a single source—at the click of a button—to house all of the information, assets, and stories an institution has. This makes sharing and using digital assets much quicker.
But here are some top reasons why museums invest in DAM:
The single source of truth: It’s a centralized place to store digital assets and media, which users in any location can upload to, share, and access, including external users (depending on user permissions, of course). This also means reduction in duplicative assets.
Ease of access: Supporting the need and ability to work remotely, a (cloud-native; we’ll get to that a little later below) DAM enables users from marketing to curators to have access to all assets they have permission to access.
Use resources more efficiently: Having digital assets in different locations or even systems can make it frustrating to find what you need, when you need it. Using a DAM helps to cut down on those frustrations and asks for content or a specific artifact, which also frees up more of your, your team’s, and other departments’ resources.
Reach new audiences for your museum: Share your collections and other assets with new audiences—even people who haven’t been inside the physical doors of your institution.
Secure your content: Time-based media has and will continue to play an important role for museums and cultural institutions, especially as video consumption continues to rise. Using a dedicated DAM platform helps to ensure you can protect your content and protect unwanted access (e.g. allowing you to add watermarks, use expiring links). It puts you in control over your assets.
What to consider when selecting a DAM
Now that you have a few reasons for how you can benefit from a DAM, here are just a few items to be on the lookout for when making a selection:
Compatibility: Ensure that the DAM system is compatible with all asset types including rich and time-based media formats—for storing and sharing photographs and audio and video footage. This may vary depending on your needs, but you want something that can grow with your organization.
User permissions: Sharing can be easy with a DAM, but look for a system that allows you to tailor access (which includes uploading and editing files) by user and teams, making sure you always have the control you need.
Cloud-native: With technologies continually changing, you want a system that can be flexible and easy to update and you can look no further than a cloud-native solution. (Learn more about some key terms related to cloud.)
Explore how a DAM could support your museum
Museums can benefit from a DAM for so many reasons and finding the right DAM is important to enable your team(s) to do their own jobs more efficiently—allowing everyone to focus on the mission of the institution.
To learn how the Terentia DAM could work for your institution, sign up for a demo.