Digital Asset Management Around The ClockDigital Asset Management Around The Clock

Photo editors are preparing to converge on San Francisco to review 2.5 million photos submitted for a planned series of books that will document a week in the life of the United States. But unlike similar projects that have been done in the past, this one will showcase the benefits of the emerging technology known as digital asset management, which lets rich media assets be stored in a Web-based database and accessed easily using a search engine and metadata that identifies each photo.

America 24/7, an ambitious effort from 24/7 Media, will consist of an initial large-format book, America 24-7, to be published in November, followed by 52 additional volumes coming next year and featuring each state, as well as New York City and Washington, D.C.

For past projects, 24/7 Media has had to keep track of thousands of rolls of film manually, relying on FedEx, adhesive labels, and phone calls to photographers to keep things straight. "It was an incredibly painful process of managing total chaos," says Rick Smolan, principal of 24/7 Media and co-director of the project. Using digital asset management software from WebWare Corp., 24/7 has been able to open up the effort to thousands of photographers armed with digital cameras, while simplifying the management of the project. Previous projects were limited to 100 photographers.

Photo editors from a number of prestigious publications will spend two weeks sifting through the 2.5 million entries, 85,000 of which will be stored using WebWare's ActiveMedia Enterprise software. Just 13,000 photos will appear in the national book. By having the photographers submit their photos with a complete set of metadata describing each photo's location, date, photographer, and other identifying characteristics, Smolan and the 24/7 team will be able to easily locate types of photos and ensure that no photos are lost or misidentified. "It really changes the whole thing," Smolan says.

The project is the latest shot in the arm for digital asset-management market. "Any implementation of scale is a good proof point since it's still such a young market," Yankee Group senior analyst Rob Lancaster says. Digital asset-management software has become a staple for companies that specialize in managing digital media, such as advertising agencies and marketing firms. Eventually, Lancaster says, it will become a core software asset for all large companies, which are seeing their rich media libraries growing.