audit-a-digital-asset-library

name	audit-a-digital-asset-library
category	media
description	Audit a digital asset library for identity, duplicates, metadata, rights, consent, accessibility, quality, lineage, access, retention, and retrieval. Use when a media collection is difficult to trust or reuse.

audit-a-digital-asset-library

When to use

• Use before migration, consolidation, campaign reuse, rights renewal, archival transfer, or platform retirement.
• Do not delete apparent duplicates until relationships, edits, rights, and downstream references are proven.

Procedure

1. Define repositories, asset classes, stakeholders, sampling rules, risk tiers, and acceptance criteria.
2. Inventory files and records with stable IDs, hashes, paths, formats, sizes, dates, owners, and access controls.
3. Build exact-duplicate, near-duplicate, version, rendition, source, project, campaign, and publication relationships.
4. Test required metadata, controlled vocabulary, provenance, rights, consent, embargo, expiry, privacy, and accessibility fields.
5. Sample technical quality, preview fidelity, search relevance, download behavior, links, permissions, and audit logs.
6. Classify orphaned, conflicting, expired, inaccessible, corrupt, unsupported, and high-value assets without overwriting evidence.
7. Produce prioritized remediation, accountable owners, reversible changes, exception handling, and a re-audit schedule.

Failure plan

• Freeze risky reuse and preserve original records when identity, rights, consent, or lineage cannot be resolved.

Worked example

A global brand separates exact duplicates from localized edits and blocks reuse of images whose model releases cannot be linked.

Done

• A digital asset library audit records scope, inventory, relationships, metadata, rights, accessibility, access, quality, findings, and owners
• Hash, sample, search, permission, lineage, expiry, restore, and remediation evidence supports every material conclusion