Review the metadata terminology

In this video, you will learn:

  • What metadata is and where it comes from
  • Which questions to ask when developing a metadata strategy
  • How keywords are different than metadata
  • How a keyword taxonomy can be beneficial
  • Searching for assets using metadata and keywords
Transcript
Now, before we dive in with the setups, let’s just take a review and redefine what metadata and keywords are in the Workfront DAM. Now today, I am going to use pictures. I am a big picture person. I think they’re more fun to look at.
They lend themselves to the metadata a little bit better. So that’s what I’m going to use today in my demonstration. Now, when it comes to the real world, I know that not everything you’re going to be handling is photos. You’re going to have Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs. Everything works the same. I just think pictures are prettier to look at. So I’m going to jump into my Paris folder here. And you know what? Let’s just select this photo of the Arc de Triomphe. And let’s look at the metadata that goes with this particular document, this particular asset.
So metadata is generally defined as all the data that you use to describe an asset. And metadata tends to be factual information. So when I have this picture selected, in fact, let’s just double click on it and open it up so we get a full screen view here. Okay. Over here in the Details panel, this is all of my metadata information about this particular asset.
Metadata fields have names. Created by, Uploaded, File size, Created Date, City.
Even if I click that View Fields, we can see some fields that aren’t even filled in. Headline, Object Name, Source.
So all of these fields are considered metadata. And the way that I like to define metadata or think about metadata fields is the field actually has a specific name. Therefore, it’s looking for you to put in specific information in that field. So here in the Source field. Well, what’s the source of this image? Who should get the byline on this image? What province was it taken in? Who should I contact about this image? So those are all things that are specific pieces of information.
Now, some of these fields you are going to fill in yourself, like these ones that I’ve been clicking in, the Contact, the Byline, the Source, even the Credit that’s already filled in. Those can be filled in manually.
But some of the information’s going to come from the camera this picture came from, or it’s going to come from the application that the app that was created in.
So for example, the first two fields, Created by and Uploaded. Those were entered. Those are metadata fields that were, the information was put in them by Workfront DAM when I uploaded the specific asset.
But the Capture date, the File size, the Dimensions, the Color space, the File type, you’ll notice that none of that is editable. And that’s because that’s just information that came from my camera, came with the asset, into Workfront DAM.
Now, where does this metadata come from? Well, depending on what program you’re in, it can come from different places. Now, since I am using photos as a demo today, I am going to pull up an example here and this is just a screenshot. It was easier to take a screenshot. But on the File Info field on Photoshop.
All of these fields, the Document Title, the Description, the Copyright Notice, and especially when we get into these IPTC fields over here in the other windows, all of those fields have pieces of information, metadata in them that could come over into Workfront DAM.
Also has keywords. We treat those a little bit differently, but I just did want to point out that we can put keywords there also. Now, what I’ve discovered as I’ve been doing a little bit of poking around looking for metadata is that, and I’m an Adobe product user, so that’s mainly what I’m in most of the time, is even in a PDF, I can put in metadata. And it’s in the Document Properties and it’s usually in the Description area. So right here, all of this, Title, Author, Subject, those are all going to correspond with metadata fields. There’s my keywords again. And you’ll even notice here that you’ve got an additional metadata button so we could go in and fill in additional fields of information on this PDF.
Any metadata fields, any ITPC fields that are already filled in on an asset when you load 'em in, it’ll load that information into the corresponding field here in the DAM.
Now, why is metadata important? Well, first of all, it’s identifying information about your asset. How big is it? Is it RGB, CMYK, grayscale? When was it created? Who’s the copyright for? All that is information that we’re going to need in the course of using this asset in our work. But metadata can also be searched on here in Workfront DAM. So I could search for all of the assets created by Alison. I could search for all of the assets that have France in the Country field.
So having consistently entered metadata is going to be important and vital to some of your searching success. Now, there’s a couple pages in the manual that talk about metadata best practices. And I’m going to let you guys look through that on your own time, but there are a couple of their best practices on there that I do want to highlight.
First of all, educate everybody on your metadata strategy. What fields should be filled out? Who should be filling them out? What information should be in those fields? And that may involve talking with vendors, talking with outside agencies, talking with freelancers and letting them know what you expect in the terms of metadata when they’re submitting work to you.
Who’s responsible for adding the metadata? Is it the person who uploads the asset? Is it the person who receives the asset from the vendor? Is it an asset librarian? Is it a traffic controller? Who is it? Who’s responsible for getting that in and making sure it’s there? And like I said before, which fields have to be filled in, which ones are optional. If you get everybody on the same page and get your metadata consistent, your searches are going to be more accurate, things are going to be categorized better, and it’s just going to make a better experience for everybody. Now, you’re going to work with your Workfront consultant on developing your metadata strategy for your organization. Just because I think that the Credit field should always be filled in doesn’t mean that’s something that’s important to your organization. Everybody’s going to have different metadata needs.
What I’m going to show you today here in just a few minutes is how to determine which of these fields we’re going to make show up right here in this list on each asset.
But before we do that, I just want to review keywords also because that’s another big thing that we’re going to be taking a look at today. Now, keywords are technically a subset of metadata, but we really treat 'em as a separate thing here in Workfront DAM. They’ve got their own area, they’ve got their own field to go in. So we’ll just treat 'em separately.
But keywords tend to be this more descriptive terms about your asset or about the contents of the asset.
So metadata’s going to tend to be more factual. The keywords are descriptive. So we’ve got this nice picture here of the traffic around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. So my keywords I’ve put in are Paris, France, Europe, tourism. Maybe I want to put traffic in there.
And you’ll notice that right now, my keyword field is just letting me type in keywords and I hit a return between each one. Traffic, monument, which I have a feeling I didn’t…
Monu, I put too many N’s in there. There we go.
So I can just type 'em in and then you just save those changes when I’m done.
But another thing that we’re going to look at today is using a taxonomy or a pick list of keywords for your users to choose from. So for example, in my pick list of keywords I have in my sample system here, I’ve got mostly countries or continents of the world.
And you can see that actually the France and the Europe came from my pick list.
But if I wanted to go in here to Star Wars, maybe that’s Tattooine.
I can go to North America and I’ll pick Canada and those will add those keywords to that list also.
Now, keywords, a lot of times are added after you upload an asset. But as I showed you in Photoshop and in that PDF, you can definitely add 'em before you even load 'em into Workfront DAM. So again, that’s something that a workflow you’ll need to establish with your users.
Keywords are searchable.
So I can go up here to my search, I can search on Paris, I can search North America, and it’s going to pull up any assets that have those same keywords. In fact, I can click on a keyword.
Usually it works, doesn’t today. I can click on a keyword and it’ll show me all the assets that have the same keyword.
I think I need to refresh.
There we go.
So that’s the only one with that particular keyword in it.
Let’s try another one. Let’s try Paris. Should have quite a few of those. Okay. So it’s just a quick way to search and it’s another reason that you’re getting your keywords in consistently and correctly all the time is important is because it’s just another way to categorize, find what you’re looking for.
So again, your consultant’s going to work with you on your keyword strategy. I’ll show you here in a little bit how to set up that pick list, that taxonomy. Talk about some of the benefits of letting users enter their own versus using the taxonomy. But your consultant’s going to be able to help guide you and figure out what works best for your organization.
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