The Rich Media Hoarders have spoken, and now it’s time to view the results and learn what types of metadata are important to other DAM users.
The idea of the poll was to discover what popular types of metadata are used when finding digital assets, as well as the popular types of metadata that are used for using and distributing the assets once they are found. For example, someone might do a find in a digital asset management system using the keyword “sunset”, but then check the “Usage Rights” metadata field to determine if they’re allowed to use a picture of a sunset in a particular project.
You can see the results of the poll below, including write-in answers that weren’t included as default poll options. I hope these answers will inspire you to try something new, improve your workflow, but more importantly make things easier for yourself and others who need to access to your files.
Write-in answers provided by respondents in the “Other” category included:
| Date | Source | Company Contact Info |
| Filename | Category | Use Permissions |
| Job Number | Access Rights | Tags |
| Accession/Object Registration Number | Internal Metadata | Client Name |
| Copyright | Name | Person’s Employment Ttle |
| Code Name of files | GPS Data | City |
| Title | IPTC Core | Country |
| Product Description |
I was not surprised to see “Keywords” at the top of the list followed by “Description/Caption” since in my experience these are the most commonly used fields, and almost every app out there that reads or writes metadata supports them.
After reviewing the “Other” category, I realized that “Filename” and “Job Number” should have been included in the default poll options. Those are both commonly used fields for searching, although file names can sometimes be used to automatically generate keywords making them redundant as a search field (read the File Naming Best Practices article for more info on filenames).
I also found it somewhat surprising that “Date” was the highest write-in answer in the “Other” category. I then realized that searching on the “Date” field along with another metadata field can be helpful for efficiently narrowing search results. For example, a keyword search combined with a date search could limit results to items that were created recently. If you’re using a “Date” field for searching, I’d love to know how and why you’re using it—please let us know in the comments section.
Write-in answers provided by respondents in the “Other” category included:
|
Caption
|
Description |
Source
|
| Keywords | Product |
Where the asset is being used
|
|
Date
|
Attribution |
Codec
|
|
Place
|
Title |
Job Number
|
I wasn’t really surprised by the results about metadata for using and distributing assets, however I would have expected “Expiration Date” to be higher on the list. “Caption” and “Description” were (now obvious) answers that should have been included in the default poll options—these fields help the searcher understand the content of the asset (what’s going on in the picture, Five Ws, etc.)
Now that you’ve read the poll results, did anything surprise you? Did the results give you any new ideas on how to improve your workflow? What questions would you ask in poll about metadata? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Thanks for the post, Edward. I’m trying to figure out what dam solution to go with. I’ve downloaded Portfolio and had a conversation with a sales guy, but still having trouble figuring out next steps – drop me a line please! I like how you’ve charted the meta data – definitely things I didn’t think about but need to include.
Sure, I’ll send you an email.
Take a look at Elvis. http://www.elvisdam.com/
It has recently been acquired by WoodWing.
You can download a a demo client or even a full working trial.
I haven’t tried it myself yet. But if you do give it a try, please share your experience.
Thanks
Thanks Kris. I tried to download a demo but got this error: “Signup failed: Unknown SMTP host: smtp.gmail.com” I’m guessing there’s something wrong with their site so I’ll try back later.
Edward, Sorry I missed entering the poll. From the poll results, are you able to ascertain the combinations of popular fields that might be used by individuals? For instance, different users will have different combinations of fields, and this maybe down to the way they store and access their ‘hoard’, i.e. are they storing their assets for archival reasons which they alone manage, or a reference library open to colleagues, or content such as graphics for workflow management? The interest regarding field priority will no doubt show various patterns depending on the type use for any catalogue.
John
I’m not seeing an easy way to segment answers from individual and group users, although that’s a great idea for a future poll. If anything you could put less weight on answers for the second question (“What info needs to be available to the people who find your files”) since the question was framed for a workgroup setting and I’m guessing the majority of answers apply to a multi-user workflow. This is good feedback for me to keep in mind for future polls, thanks!
As a photographer, Exif-Date Taken is an important field for me as the date an image was taken is important to my colleagues. It is the evidence of what a place or area looked like at a particular time. (In reference to my earlier post)I suppose I use Portfolio server as a library for my colleagues to access. For older images where the date is uncertain, or maybe known to a year I use a custom field so I can include the word Circa. The officially provided date field I do not use at all because it does not allow for this situation. But it is a pain to have two date fields and Extensis have decided that Date Taken is not important enough to place in the properties box.
John
Agreed, I think EXIF Date Taken is one of the most important pieces of metadata since the filename!
I could explain the technical details of why you can’t put text characters in a date field (which you may already know), but I think the real issue here is somehow signifying that the date in that field is not exact ( by denoting “cira” or through another means). This is good feedback that I’m going to pass to our developers.
You can customize both the Web Client and Desktop Client field views to display the Date Taken field in different views. See page 28 of the Web Client user guide (http://doc.extensis.com/Portfolio-Server-10-1-Web-Client-User-Guide.pdf) or page 31 of the Desktop Client user guide (http://doc.extensis.com/PS10-Desktop-Client-User-Guide-EN.pdf) for details.
Actually I use 3 date fields. The first is the ‘Exif Date Taken’. The 2nd is a text field where I type in the date taken, (I fill this in even if the Exif is there). This field allows me to type in either ‘dd/mm/yyyy’ or ‘mm/yyyy’ or ‘yyyy’ or ‘yyyy circa’. The 3rd field is what I have called ‘Date Range’. This contains pre-listed ranges of years i.e. ’1970-1974′ 1975-1979′ ’1980-1985′ and so on. This helps to cut down the number of returns on popular subjects without having to remember a particular year. It also helps with older photography searches where dates are very vague. One disadvantage of the 2nd date field is that it can’t be ordered chronologically. I would have had to type the date as yyyy/mm/dd. So any development here would be good as I think this is a bit messy for my clients.
We search for dates to find an image because it seems every department on our company will have a different name for a Press conference or a photo shoot. In the photo department where the archives are kept we have jobs listed by the original name it was given at the time of the actual shoot but overtime memories erode and later down the line someone in PR will ask us for a photo from a job we never heard of. Most of the time we can narrow it down if we are given a date. It becomes detective work quite often.
Date fields are great, aren’t they? Good work, detective!
We use job numbers internally, as that’s very efficient, but they are impractical for our designers, so keywords are extremely important, as well as a structured hierarchical architecture, as they design by particular subjects (college majors, for example).
We also need very precise captions / descriptions for each photo, not only as grist for our writers but, we need to attribute student designer’s names when we shoot their work.