When Archivists and Digital Asset Managers Collide: Tensions and Ways Forward

Abstract

While archivists have been developing methods to appraise, accession, arrange, and describe born-digital records, a new class of professional-the digital asset manager-has emerged. Digital asset managers see their role as creating repositories of assets that can be easily and efficiently reused by staff. Given the closeness of this role to that of the archivist, this case study explores the question, what issues arise between archivists and digital asset managers when they are working together in the same organization? To study this, the researcher spent one year as a participant observer at a major art museum located in the northeast United States. He found that indeed tensions do exist, first because the digital asset manager and archivist do not recognize the different roles each is playing and hence enter a kind of competition. Second, this tension stems from an intellectual disagreement about how digital recordkeeping will play out over the next several decades. The article concludes with suggestions for moving forward so that both digital asset managers and archivists can further their respective missions.