Defense Imagery Management Operations Center Adopts Wazee Digital’s Controlled Vocabulary Feature (MESA)
Wazee Digital today announced that its “controlled vocabulary” option for Wazee Digital Core, the company’s cloud-native digital asset management solution that powers all of its products and services, is now in production and being used by the U.S Department of Defense. Controlled vocabulary allows Core clients to import and use one or more custom thesauri within the application. In this way, they can standardize their terminology within Core, a capability that is especially helpful for customers in industries that use specialized language, such as government, medicine, and sports.
The controlled vocabulary feature, a rare offering among media-management platforms, allows users to maintain term structure and keyword consistency across the Core database. Standardizing industry-accepted terms reduces ambiguity and enables more efficient search and retrieval for Core users. The feature is flexible enough that users can be as simple or complex with terminology hierarchy and relationships as is appropriate for their business needs.
Meanwhile, related “search type ahead” and “term assist” functionality helps with search-term continuity. When a user starts typing into the search field, this functionality suggests some terms and discourages others to help refine the search based on the given customer’s specialized language. Implementing a controlled vocabulary ensures, for example, that when searching for “tank,” clients with nature- and animal-focused libraries will find “tank-fish-saltwater,” while a military-based client will find “tank-panzer-military.”
The controlled vocabulary option was developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Imagery Management Operations Center (DIMOC), the division that manages and preserves U.S. military imagery. The Images of Freedom archive is an online service that uses the controlled vocabulary and runs on the Core platform, which provides access to the powerful catalog of content managed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
DIMOC integrated its specialized vocabulary into Core, standardized its list of search terms, and added keywords to its imagery according to Department of Defense requirements. In doing so, DIMOC improved the accuracy and speed of search.
“When you have the volume of images and videos in your library that we do, it’s important to make the search function as quick and easy as possible. That’s what makes the controlled vocabulary function such a vital part of our archive,” said Barbara Burfeind, DIMOC director. “Applying a controlled vocabulary to the archive helps improve the search for imagery, which ultimately yields more accurate results more quickly for all our customers.”
“Discovery is at the heart of our business. Being able to access what they need when they need it is an essential function for everyone who uses our products,” said Harris Morris, CEO of Wazee Digital. “With controlled vocabulary, our users can spend less time and energy searching for assets such as video and images, which reduces cost, improves workflow and productivity, and creates an ever-increasing number of revenue channels as assets become easier to push to social platforms or distribute to outside requestors.”
Core’s controlled vocabulary functionality is now available as an option for Core users. Interested customers should contact their account manager for details.