Olaolu Beckley

In this day and age where almost everyone is a “content creator”, it is important to document your digital assets. Digital assets in this context, are files/data stored in a digital format. Examples are photos, videos, documents, music, software, etc. These digital assets can be very valuable, sentimentally and financially.

Some reasons why you should document your digital assets:

Record keeping: It’s easy to lose track of all your digital assets, especially if you have many. By documenting your assets, you can keep track of where they are stored and who has access to them.

Protection of your assets: Digital assets can be damaged or lost for different reasons, software corruption, cyberattacks, or hardware failure. By documenting your assets, you can make it easier to recover them if they are lost or damaged.

Sharing with others: If you want to share your digital assets with others, it is important to document them first so that you can easily share them in a secure way.

The best way to document your assets is by using a dedicated digital asset management (DAM) system. This also depends on the size and complexity of your data/collection.

Be thorough with your documentation; include all the necessary details about each asset, i.e. file name, location, date created, and who has access to it.

On a personal note, I remember a particular experience I had with Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, GCON. He had asked me for a speech he delivered at an event organized by the then Minister of State for Petroleum, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu. I checked his website and my hard drive with the date of the said event and I couldn’t find anything! No speech, photos, video, or press statement, absolutely nothing! I went back to him and said I had nothing.

I mentioned to him if I didn’t have anything documented about the event, then there was a likelihood he wasn’t there. Prof. was adamant and said he was sure he went. Suddenly, I remembered that I also documented his travel log, so I checked with the date, and alas, Prof. was in Lome, Togo, on that particular day!

Being a Professor of Law of Evidence, I went back to him armed with evidence, confident of my work as his Special Assistant on Documentation. I showed him that he was out of the country and at that point, he didn’t argue anymore and said, “you see why it is important to document stuff ?” I just smiled and left his office.

Images by Tolani Alli