Pixar manages its pictures, videotapes and cartoon models with a DAM database, while newspapers use similar technology to keep tabs on their newly digitized archives. In any industry, DAM systems can ease the storage, indexing, retrieval, and reuse of files. They can track important inter-office movement, like a file's creator and the employees who've used it. And while it's nice to be organized, DAM also makes it easier for digital rights management (DRM) systems - i.e., technology that facilitates secure distribution and aims to stamp out piracy - to work on a large scale.

DAM enthusiasts can list a range of other perks, but the veracity of those claims depend on the ever-elusive question of where technology is headed. Take e-books: there's no way of knowing whether they have a future, so investing in DAM with e-books (or any other technology) in mind may be a gamble.

Time Warner Trade Publishing vice president of operations Larry Feldman doesn't share the skepticism. "Digital content and digital publishing are not going to go away," he says. If he's right, publishing companies with DAM systems have a good head start. That doesn't mean they get off easy. A digitally-focused content management system involves more than hiring a DAM vendor like Artesia Technologies (Time Warner's pick) or Flexstor.net, says Dan O'Brien of Forrester Research. Other facets of publishing will have to be brought into the 21st century, too. For example, the print publishing industry's standard tools count paper pages, but the XML language doesn't -- making XML better for tasks like fitting e-books on differently sized screens. Fortunately for employees who might otherwise get stuck with the hand-coding, applications exist to convert old documents to XML, like the $199 avenue.quark software.

XML tags or DAM software won't make the "create once, publish everywhere" yarn a reality, though. A great book cover is different from a great website thumbnail photo - and David Foster Wallace's footnotes don't work so well on a Palm screen. Publishers will have to rethink their content for potential digital distribution and old-school employees may balk at the extra steps. But Feldman says asking employees to adopt a new philosophy hasn't created a morale problem, and it's easier to do it right the first time than risk backtracking later.

As for the rights-management connection, DAM can't make up for breakable encryption or watermarking. (Crackers liberated Stephen King's first e-book from its encryption within hours of its release, and pay-per-download music sites often find their tracks on file-sharing systems). What DAM can do is manage rights and permissions within the company - like a photo that should only be used in a dead-tree book, not online or in a marketing campaign. That's not as sexy as outsmarting Napster, but it's useful.

Publishers smaller or less converged than AOL-Time Warner units tend to be more reluctant. If there aren't enough people, assets, or distribution channels involved, a $100,000 DAM system "becomes overkill," admits Artesia Technologies president and COO Scott Bowen, but he thinks such companies still need DAM. It'll just be outsourced, most likely to a third-party digital management company, or developed in-house.

Verdict: DAM is a good idea, but not yet mandatory for small companies. As for the media powerhouses, they can still clutter up their desks when they're feeling nostalgic for the paper-based days gone by.