Why academic institutions need a DAM system

10th September 2024

ResourceSpace is one of the most popular DAM solutions for academic institutions, with the likes of UC Berkeley, University of Oxford and London Business School all using the system to manage their digital assets.

Of course, there are alternatives to using dedicated Digital Asset Management systems—for example Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint or Box—but these file storage solutions aren’t fit for purpose.

READ MORE: What's the difference between a DAM and Google Drive?

So, if your university, college or school still hasn’t migrated to a DAM, it’s time to make the switch. Here’s why.

The need for Digital Asset Management in academia

Academic institutions are having to manage an ever-increasing volume of digital assets, whether that’s images, video or audio content, while there’s also a growing complexity in what these institutions want to do with them. This is particularly true for Higher Education, with colleges and universities competing for student tuition—but to do this effectively they have to be able to tell convincing and emotive stories about why students should choose them.

High education institutions (HEIs) produce huge amounts of content, including marketing materials, administrative documents, research papers and audiovisual presentations, and this quantity of content creates challenges in terms of discovery, storage and sharing.

When HEIs rely on file storage solutions like Google Drive for storing digital assets, and fail to implement a comprehensive Digital Asset Management strategy, these assets end up scattered across departments, specific employee machines and student servers. This makes it next to impossible to track and control asset usage, leading to duplication of effort, inconsistencies in brand assets and potential issues regarding usage permissions and licenses.

HEIs also have a responsibility to archive the work and research produced by students and faculty staff, but again doing this without a dedicated DAM system is difficult, particularly when technology evolves and old file formats become outdated. 

6 key benefits of implementing a DAM system in academic institutions

Digital Asset Management systems like ResourceSpace offer a comprehensive suite of tools that can address all of the challenges mentioned above. A DAM will empower academic institutions of all types to effectively organise, store, share and secure all kinds of digital content.

The key benefits of implementing a DAM in academic institutions include:

1. Centralising all digital assets

2. Enhanced search functionality with metadata

3. Version control

4. Access control and permissions

5. Integrations

6. Usage tracking and analytics

1. Centralising all digital assets

With a DAM you’ll no longer need to search through emails, servers or ask your team where a certain digital asset is stored. Every piece of content produced by the institution will be within the DAM system. In ResourceSpace, digital assets can also be organised into specific Collections, making it even easier to find the content you’re looking for.

2. Enhanced search functionality with metadata

One of the most powerful features of a DAM is that they’re powered by metadata.

Unlike file storage solutions that typically require you to know the name of the file you’re looking for, assets stored in a DAM can be tagged with relevant metadata keywords that can then be searched for. For example, the below image could be tagged with ‘students’, ‘studying’, ‘library’, ‘books’ and more.

When a user searches the DAM for ‘library’, this image would be returned even if the user doesn’t know the name of this image, while any other image tagged with ‘library’ would also be returned.

3. Version control 

A DAM system will maintain a comprehensive version history of every asset, allowing the DAM manager to track changes, revert content to previous versions, and ensure consistency across the different iterations.

Robust version control is particularly important for academic institutions where multiple users are accessing content with edit access.

4. Access control and permissions

Although file storage solutions allow for a degree of access control, a DAM system offers granular access control and permissions, from collections and resource types, down to individual assets.

Controlling sensitive information is particularly important for public institutions like schools and colleges, while the law requires organisations handling the personal information of children to be particularly careful.

READ MORE: How UK GDPR impacts Digital Asset Management

5. Integrations

A DAM can be integrated across your entire marketing tech stack, allowing you to share content between systems easily and securely, without the need to constantly download assets to local machines before uploading them.

For example, ResourceSpace integrates with the Adobe Suite to allow you to edit assets and reupload the new versions easily, social media channels, Wordpress and many more.

6. Usage tracking and analytics

Most DAM systems will offer some degree of usage analytics, allowing you to see what assets are being searched for, accessed, downloaded and edited. This allows DAM managers to identify gaps in the content library if users are searching for content that doesn’t exist, or issues with metadata tagging if common searches aren’t returning the best results.

Examples of DAM in academic institutions

Kent School, an independent college preparatory boarding school based in Connecticut, is a great example of Digital Asset Management transforming the way academic institutions can manage their content.

The school was founded in 1906, and in that time the institution had built up a huge archive of physical documents, including student records, grade reports, application files, historical assets and images. However, this content was spread across archivists’ local machines and physical archives.

“This posed all kinds of challenges around preservation, access and security,” said Amy Voorhees, the school’s Library Director.

“Keyword search and metadata is everything for us, [and] being able to set varied access permissions for different user groups has also been crucial for us.”

You can read the full Kent School case study here.

Ready to find out how ResourceSpace can transform the content management of your academic institution? Book a free demo here, or launch your free ResourceSpace instance within minutes by clicking below. Simply enter some details and select the ‘Academic’ template to see what the DAM could look like for your school or university.