How Vanderbilt University Centralized Its Visual Content Across Campus

Vanderbilt needed one DAM across colleges and divisions

Vanderbilt University is a major private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, with 11 schools and colleges and nearly 13,000 students. 

With so many colleges, divisions, and partners managing photos, videos, and creative assets, Vanderbilt needed one system that made content easier to find and share for the entire university. 

The challenge: Previous DAM made assets hard to find 

Kyle Carson, Vanderbilt’s Digital Asset Manager, supports visual content across colleges, divisions, communications teams, and external partners. He handles everything from daily asset requests to major campaigns, commencement, donor events, admissions projects, and press needs. But the university’s prior DAM made that work harder than it needed to be. 

• Prior DAM created a confusing experience for campus teams. Their last system had a lot of bells and whistles, and it was confusing for users. They would look at the UI and say, ‘Okay, what do I do? There are things everywhere.’
• Nobody could find what they needed. Not every campus user knew how assets were tagged, organized, or named. That made it harder for people to find what they needed, especially when they didn’t know the exact keywords, folder structure, or metadata behind the file.
  
• Sharing access meant losing control. Some assets needed campus-wide access, while others belonged to a specific team, project, or audience. Vanderbilt needed to make content available to the right people without opening up every file to everyone. 
• Different colleges were using different tools. Without a central DAM that worked for everyone, it was harder for people to find assets, especially when they moved between departments or needed content from another team.

Photo by Harrison McClary/Vanderbilt University

The solution: Vanderbilt uses PhotoShelter to organize, search, and share visual assets

Before PhotoShelter, Vanderbilt teams had to work around a DAM that required more manual work with less control. Now, Kyle’s team can provide each college and division with access to the DAM to manage their content.

Here’s how PhotoShelter helps Vanderbilt support content needs across campus.

• One central place for campus content. Vanderbilt’s colleges and divisions can access visual assets through the same central library. Users can find what they need more independently, reducing the number of search-related questions sent to Kyle.
• AI tools help locate specific people and moments in their library. With AI Visual Search and PeopleID, users can search large galleries without relying only on exact keywords or folder structures. Smart Galleries help route new assets into the right places automatically, so press teams and campaign stakeholders can access current content without waiting on a manual handoff.
• Access and ownership settings improve sharing. PhotoShelter helped Kyle give teams ownership over their assets. For campaigns and projects with multiple teams, Workspaces help Vanderbilt gather, review, and organize selected assets without opening up the full library.

“Instead of the university having 12 or 15 tools throughout every different college, and everyone having to learn new things when they transfer, having that centralized repository has really helped.”

Digital Asset Manager, Vanderbilt University

A centralized DAM supports content use across Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt has a lot of people creating, managing, and using visual content across campus. Now, with PhotoShelter, Vanderbilt has an organized and accessible digital asset management platform to share visual assets across colleges and divisions.

For Kyle, the value is simple: the DAM has to make sense for the people using it.

“If you were to combine Google Image Search plus Amazon shopping filters, that’s DAM in a nutshell. PhotoShelter is a curated, developed tool to do that in a way that makes sense, particularly for universities.”

Digital Asset Manager, Vanderbilt University