Here’s the last month’s Digital Asset Management articles which had a lasting impression on me – picked from the constant stream of blog posts you can see float by on Planet DAM. For more curated DAM links, see the weekly Digital Asset Management.com Links and Tracy Wolfe’s 10 things on the 10th.

“The realisation of interoperability standards in DAM is key to whether it has longevity as a market”, writes Ralph Windsor in the introduction to his excellent DAM News article Finding Signs Of Life In DAM: Interoperability 1.0. The need for a digital supply chain, built on integration-friendly tools, is also one of Kevin Gepford’s 8 top takeaways from the Creative Ops conference. Max Dunn, writing about Silicon Publishing’s Canto Flight InDesign Plugin, reasons about different approaches to integration. In an unusual move, the museum community writes an open letter to DAM vendors, asking them to implement IIIF, the International Image Interoperability Framework.

From the Henry Stewart DAM New York conference, Cory Schmidt reports on the latest DAM trends, Frédéric Sanuy summarizes DAM NY 2017, and Douglas Eldridge shares his insights from the best damn conference. Presentations from the conference include Uri Kogan on the future of DAM, and Douglas Hegley on digital transformation in the nonprofit sector.

“There will be much talk about processes and technology, but often not a huge amount about the people.” In People, help the people, Romney Whitehead champions the cause of people making DAM successful. Emily Kolvitz explains how to find your DAM champion, Anna Cotton why you need a dedicated DAM manager. Jake Athey lists 3 steps to manage your content library like a librarian. Emily Kolvitz also reveals her DAM elevator speech. And here’s two DAM practitioners telling their stories, Alice Cameron (Northwestern University) and Dan Piro (National Hockey League).

User adoption is a hot topic, with Emily Quan explaining how to improve DAM user adoption, Ralph Windsor recommending her article, and Alan J. Porter giving advice on getting users to give a damn about the DAM. Rande Anmuth Simpson stresses the importance of smooth workflows enabled by integrations. See also the Brandworkz user adoption toolkit.

Good DAM software is flexible, as Neil Monahan outlines in Why you need to choose a configurable DAM platform. His colleague Jens Lundgaard offers questions you must ask your DAM vendor before you buy (an article recommended by Ralph Windsor). Annella Mendoza writes about change management and the DAM environment. See also the slides by Emily Kolvitz and Romney Whitehead titled DAM goes mainstream with DIY.

To learn more about taxonomy, check out Jennifer Crawford’s fun taxonomy of a taco and Sarah Khan’s introduction to taxonomies. There’s a very nice interview with Bob Kasenchak on building taxonomies (podcast, 53 minutes). Heather Hedden writes about adjective and verb terms in taxonomies. These two articles on metadata are not about DAM but there’s many parallels: Michael Andrews – Your content needs a metadata strategy, and Kevin Parker – How Information Architecture improves customer experience. Theresa Regli asks whether auto-tagging technology (“AI”) can replace humans.

Rights management is complicated; Henrik de Gyor explains why ignoring rights management will cost you (webinar video, 56 minutes). Stuart Myles’ slides show how the Associated Press archives handle rights. The FADEL Rights Cloud promises to automate content rights clearance in real-time.

There’s an unlimited supply of blog posts about DAM basics – these ones stand out: Renee Veldman-Tentori has a very refreshing take on her learning about DAM. Meg Prater compares Google Drive to DAM, and Leslie Weller lists six reasons DAM is now part of your MarTech stack.

In other news, according to Forrester, DAM moves to the heart of the enterprise. Christopher Frenning argues that DAM protects your files from ransomware like “WannaCry”. Adobe joins IPTC as member. DuMont Media Group buys 36.5% of censhare. (Watch Ian Truscott introduce censhare’s Indian office.)

Interesting DAM case studies: Stetson Athletics, TBWA Worldwide, Dr. Martens, Widen Workflow internal case study.

Screencasts and screenshots: Third Light in Five Minutes. The Bynder Brand Guidelines module. Filestage Walkthrough. What’s New in Canto Flight CDG. MediaValet's Microsoft Office Feature.

That should be enough reading material for the next few weeks :)