Repurposing digital objects: Case studies across the publishing industry

Large, data-rich organizations have tremendously large collections of digital objects to be “repurposed,” to respond quickly and economically to publishing,marketing, and information needs. Some management typically assume that a content management system, or some other technique such as OWL and RDF,will automatically address the workflow and technical issues associated with this reuse. Four case studies show that the sources of some roadblocks to agile repurposing are as much managerial and organizational as they are technical in nature. The review concludes with suggestions on how digital object repurposing can be integrated given these organizations’ structures.