Digital Asset Management at Ohio State

DAM is a technical platform for efficiently storing digital assets. At Ohio State, we use the enterprise platform from Merlin. A DAM gives us a wide variety of file storage options for solutions to digital marketing.

A DAM saves valuable time in searching for assets. With all assets stored in one place, a DAM facilitates faster search and integrated sharing options.

• Search keywords with helpful boolean queries (this AND that, or this NOT that). Targeted search by dates, photographers, campaign names, subjects in photos or collections.
• Share assets by grouping them together in a collection, or sending a link directly to an asset. You can share assets outside Ohio State.

Different collections in the DAM have different publishing rights. For example:

• The Signature Gallery is published and maintained by The Office of Marketing and Communications. All Ohio State employees and students can use these assets for print and digital media, as it relates to university purposes.
• Units who publish and maintain a private, walled garden within the DAM can collect assets with different publishing rights.

It's important for DAM contributors to know and understand the publishing rights of the assets they upload to the DAM. Send an email to marketingenablement@osu.edu for support, or ask us questions about account access.

The DAM is a platform shared by many units so costs are distributed a few ways.

• There is no cost to users of the Signature Gallery.
• There is no cost to users of Shared Assets collective for marketing, provided that units contribute marketing assets to the collective.
• Costs for private, walled gardens storage space is leased to units for a minimum of one terabyte.
• Costs for publicly accessible content hubs are dependent on the number of assets and the number of visitors downloading or using assets.

Contact Scarlet Studio for more details on costs and agreements.

Any Ohio State employee can login to the Ohio State DAM. This means all employees can find logos, art, and images that are approved for use promoting The Ohio State University.

• Learn more about using the basics of search and share for the DAM

Marketing and communications staff can sign and be trained for access to the Shared Assets collection of the DAM. This is a crowd-sourced collection of assets to promote Ohio State.

If your unit has leased space in the DAM for a Walled Garden, you will also use the DAM to access your units' digital files and collections. Ask your marketing manager if your unit has assets stored in a walled garden.

Probably not. The best use of DAM assets is for production-ready, share-worthy images. If you take photos and want to share your assets, ask for access. Units who want to store assets in a walled garden can upload as many assets as they find worthwhile for their units.

One of the most helpful tools your unit can use when adding still assets to the DAM is Photo Mechanic, by Camera Bits. This software is helpful to catalog photos as you are in the process of capturing them. The tagging features are helpful if you find yourself organizing lots of images. Not only does it help you organize your photos, but the tags transition smoothly to the DAM in digital tags.

We recommend photographers in the university, or anyone who tracks assets destined for the DAM, sample and invest in this time-saving software.

• Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits
• Quick start guide to using Photo Mechanic

Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Bridge are another options for adding metadata to still assets.

• Lightroom Basics

Metadata can be also be added directly into Merlin. This method is needed when uploading video.

Find quick answers and reference in these training guides. Let us know how we can improve training with relavant examples for your work.