An Approach to Managing Repurposing of Digitised Knowledge Assets

Managing digital assets not only involves internal distribution, accessibilities and efficiencies, but also wider protections involved when derivative works or repurposings result from external distributions. The inherent polysemy of media artefacts has consequences for the reuse of such artefacts in multimedia systems. The multiplicity of possible meanings of a single media artefact depends on context and intention: reuse of a media artefact thus almost inevitably leads to the artefact being altered to suit the new context, and potentially losing its original meaning in the process. A system of rules is required to identify the circumstances under which a media artefact may or may not be reused throughout its life. Within this context of practice we detail a protocol of usage status and reuse request. In this protocol, usage status is assigned to a media artefact by its initial custodian and the outcome of any reuse request is determined by the intention of the reuse, the current usage status and the implied new usage status. Possible outcomes are forbidding change, permitting change, artefact forking, and changing artefact custodianship. We present a series of examples to illustrate the range of possible scenarios and their outcomes.