Digital asset management and libraries, archives and museums: separation and convergence

The University of Notre Dame’s latest Campus Crossroads Project includes the Rex and Alice A. Martin Media Center, with a 186 m2 studio, which has brought together previously dispersed media production work across campus. This is also an opportunity to develop a common solution for the life-cycle management of video assets, including archiving workflows and digital preservation requirements. This paper discusses the differences and similarities between the digital asset management (DAM) and libraries, archives and museums (LAM) communities, and the software used by them, in the context of a project aimed at assessing requirements and making recommendations for video assets management at Notre Dame. It argues that DAM and LAM professionals have a lot in common, and that the modularisation and convergence of DAM and digital preservation systems offer the best of both worlds and life-cycle support for digital assets in diverse environments such as higher education institutions.