Category: Digital Media

Audiovisual Metadata Platform (AMP) Planning Project: Progress Report and Next Steps

Jon W. Dunn et al. have self-archived Audiovisual Metadata Platform (AMP) Planning Project: Progress Report and Next Steps.

Here's an excerpt:

This report documents the outcomes of a workshop funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and hosted by Indiana University as part of a planning project for design and development of an audiovisual metadata platform (AMP). The platform will perform mass description of audiovisual content utilizing automated mechanisms linked together with human labor in a recursive and reflexive workflow to generate and manage metadata at scale for libraries and archives. The partners leading this planning project were the Indiana University (IU) Libraries, University of Texas at Austin (UT) School of Information, and AVP.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Digital Music Libraries: Librarian Perspectives and the Challenges Ahead"

Meghan Goodchild has published "Digital Music Libraries: Librarian Perspectives and the Challenges Ahead" in CAML Review.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper reports the results of a survey targeting current members of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (CAML) that investigated the extent to which the current designs and structures of digital music libraries meet the needs of librarians in collecting, preserving, organizing, and disseminating diverse types of music documents. The challenges and barriers experienced in hosting digital collections are discussed. The gap between the current and ideal functionalities, as well as the future possibilities, are explored.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Content-Based Video Retrieval in Historical Collections of the German Broadcasting Archive"

Markus Mühling et al. have self-archived "Content-Based Video Retrieval in Historical Collections of the German Broadcasting Archive."

Here's an excerpt:

The German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) maintains the cultural heritage of radio and television broadcasts of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The uniqueness and importance of the video material stimulates a large scientific interest in the video content. In this paper, we present an automatic video analysis and retrieval system for searching in historical collections of GDR television recordings. It consists of video analysis algorithms for shot boundary detection, concept classification, person recognition, text recognition and similarity search. The performance of the system is evaluated from a technical and an archival perspective on 2,500 hours of GDR television recordings

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Scholarship beyond the Word"

Tara McPherson has published "Scholarship beyond the Word" in EDUCAUSE Review.

Here's an excerpt:

If the early web tended to privilege text, today's web is deeply multimodal-full of image, sound, and video. The online photo-sharing site Flickr hosts billions of images, with roughly 1.83 million images uploaded daily in 2014; Instagram, launched in 2010, now surpasses 70 million photo uploads a day. An average of 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Sustaining Consistent Video Presentation"

Dave Rice has published "Sustaining Consistent Video Presentation" in Tate Papers.

Here's an excerpt:

This technical paper addresses approaches to identifying and mitigating risks associated with sustaining the consistent presentation of digital video files. . . .

Presenting digital video consistently is dependent on the design, coordination and quality of all aspects of both the video file and the video player. Specific factors such as what features of a codec are supported by the decoder, and how one colour space is converted to another affect how videos are presented. Media players are of course developed over time—new features are added and bugs are resolved—but while such changes may improve the quality of a player they also create scenarios where a digital media file may play differently in a new version of a player compared to an older one. As a result, the ever-evolving state of media playback technology creates challenges or technical complications for audio-visual conservators who are tasked with ensuring that digital video is presented consistently and as originally intended.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Creating and Archiving Born Digital Video

The Born Digital Video subgroup of the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative Audio-Visual Working Group has released Creating and Archiving Born Digital Video.

Here's an excerpt:

The born digital video exploration is being led by the Library of Congress. The documents that comprise Creating and Archiving Born Digital Video provide practical technical information for both file creators and file archivists to help them make informed decisions when creating or archiving born digital video files and to understand the long term consequences of those decisions. . . .

Eight case histories document aspects of the current state of practice in six federal agencies working with born digital video. These case histories not only document deliverables and specifications but also tell the story of each project, and provide background information about the institution and the collection, as well as lessons learned. As the case histories developed, a set of high level recommended practices emerged from the collective project experiences. These recommended practices are intended to support informed decision-making and guide file creators and archivists as they seek out processes, file characteristics, and other practices that will yield files with the greatest preservation potential.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

AV Digitisation and Digital Preservation TechWatch Report #01

The PrestoCentre has released the AV Digitisation and Digital Preservation TechWatch Report #01.

Here's an excerpt:

This first TechWatch Report has been written by members of PrestoCentre involved in the Presto4U project and was compiled through meetings they had with specialist technology vendors and researchers late 2013.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Feet on the Ground: A Practical Approach to the Cloud—Nine Things to Consider When Assessing Cloud Storage

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions, has released Feet on the Ground: A Practical Approach to the Cloud—Nine Things to Consider When Assessing Cloud Storage.

Here's an excerpt:

There is no all-in-one solution that will fulfill every archives' needs for preservation storage. Often, cloud storage services fulfill a portion of an organization's larger preservation infrastructure, providing secure back up for preservation copies or supporting delivery of access files from low-latency storage. Vetting and selection is therefore the alignment of organizational and collection needs with the offerings and functionality of a service. This means defining your acceptance criteria for optimal functionality and understanding how a service will fit in your preservation environment.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Digital Image Collections and Services, SPEC Kit 335

ARL has released Digital Image Collections and Services, SPEC Kit 335.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

ARL has published Digital Image Collections and Services, SPEC Kit 335, which examines how research libraries and their parent institutions have responded to the transition from analog to digital images and the growth of digital images available from commercial vendors and/or created within institutions or their libraries. The survey gathers information about current practices relating to the development and management of institutional digital image collections and the acquisition and use of licensed image databases.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

State of the Art Report on Damage Prevention and Repair of Digital AV Media

The DAVID consortium has released State of the Art Report on Damage Prevention and Repair of Digital AV Media.

Here's an excerpt:

This report contains information on the state of the art in digital damage prevention and repair of audio-visual media. It has been compiled in course of the project definition of DAVID. The DAVID project addresses specific research questions for preservation and restoration of audio-visual media. An overview on the projects rationale is presented in section 2, details on the continuing project can be found at www.david-preservation.eu.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Evaluating Large Image Support for DSpace"

Marius Nel, Kyle Williams and Hussein Suleman have self-archived "Evaluating Large Image Support for DSpace" in the UCT CS Research Document Archive.

Here's an excerpt:

Access to large images in digital libraries is desirable from a preservation perspective and may even be a requirement in some domains, such as cartography. However, providing access to large images often poses a problem as a result of the size of the images as well as the limited screen real-estate for displaying the images. Even when these issues are addressed, there is a lack of evidence about how well large image related tasks can be performed in a digital library. In investigating this, a survey was conducted in order to identify well-performing large image support tools and the best of these tools was integrated into DSpace. A user study was conducted in order to evaluate how well large images could be supported in a digital library and it was found that users were able to successfully and easily perform tasks related to large images.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

Preserving Moving Pictures and Sound

The Digital Preservation Coalition has released Preserving Moving Pictures and Sound by Richard Wright.

Here's an excerpt:

The status and technology needs of moving picture and sound materials will be examined. The scope of the report includes analogue material on physical carriers such as film, audiotape and videotape (and so stored on shelves); digital material on physical carriers such as CD, DVD, digital videotape and digital audio tape (also stored on shelves); and finally, digital content in files and so held on some form of mass storage. While the focus is on professional collections in institutions, companies or other organizations, the information will be relevant to personal holdings.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

A Study of Embedded Metadata Support in Audio Recording Software: Summary of Findings and Conclusions

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections has released A Study of Embedded Metadata Support in Audio Recording Software: Summary of Findings and Conclusions.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2010, the ARSC Technical Committee (TC) completed a study of support for embedded metadata within and across a variety of audio recording software applications. The study was coordinated, and much of it carried out, by AudioVisual Preservation Solutions. This work addressed two primary questions: How well does embedded metadata persist, and is its integrity maintained, within any given file as it is handled by various applications over time? How well is embedded metadata handled during the process of creating a derivative?

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment Launch National Jukebox

The Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment have launched the National Jukebox.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment today unveiled a new website of over 10,000 rare historic sound recordings available to the public for the first time digitally. The site is called the "National Jukebox" (www.loc.gov/jukebox/).

Developed by the Library of Congress, with assets provided by Sony Music Entertainment, the National Jukebox offers free online access to a vast selection of music and spoken-word recordings produced in the U.S. between the years 1901 and 1925. . . .

The agreement for the National Jukebox grants the Library of Congress usage rights to Sony Music’s entire pre-1925 catalog—comprising thousands of recordings produced by Columbia Records, OKeh, and Victor Talking Machine Co. among others – and represents the largest collection of such historical recordings ever made publicly available for study and appreciation online. . . .

Visitors to the National Jukebox will be able to listen to available recordings on a streaming-only basis, as well as view thousands of label images, record-catalog illustrations, and artist and performer bios. In addition, users can further explore the catalog by accessing special interactive features, listening to playlists curated by Library staff, and creating and sharing their own playlists. . . .

The website will showcase special interactive features as well, including a digital facsimile of the 1919 edition of the famous opera guide "Victrola Book of the Opera," which describes more than 110 operas, including illustrations, plot synopses and lists of recordings offered in that year. Features include the book’s original text, a comparison of the different interpretations of the most popular arias of the period, and streamed recordings of nearly every opera referenced in the book.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Final Guidelines on Copyright Clearance and IPR Management

The European Film Gateway project has released Final Guidelines on Copyright Clearance and IPR Management.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report includes:

  • an overview of legal frameworks in EU countries for the film sector
  • guidelines how to successfully clear rights related to film works
  • copyright basics (moral rights vs. exploitation rights, orphan works etc)
  • diligent search guidelines for rights holders

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

New Journal of Physics Now Includes Video Abstracts

The New Journal of Physics, an open access journal, now includes video abstracts.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

New Journal of Physics (NJP) has today announced the launch of video abstracts as a new integrated content stream that will give all authors the opportunity to go beyond the constraints of the written article to personally present the importance of their work to the journal's global audience.

Early contributions include videos from the groups of David Wineland, National Institute of Standards and Technology and J. Ignacio Cirac, Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, talking about scalable ion traps for quantum information processing, and quantum superposition of living organisms. Researchers from more than 25 countries are represented by the videos abstracts that are published today.

One of the first contributors, Neil Wilson of the University of Warwick, UK, said of the service "We are very excited to have the opportunity to feature a video abstract alongside our NJP article. Embracing the possibilities of online media in this way allows us to present our work as we see it, and helps focus interested readers on what we believe the key points to be. We hope that being able to put faces to names, and visualize some of the research in action, will add a human touch and so help the scientific community to grow closer." His video on the structure and topography of free-standing chemically modified graphene can be viewed at http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/12/125010/.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

"100 Million Hours of Audiovisual Content: Digital Preservation and Access in the PrestoPRIME Project"

Matthew Addis et al. have self-archived "100 Million Hours of Audiovisual Content: Digital Preservation and Access in the PrestoPRIME Project" in the ECS EPrints Repository.

Here's an excerpt:

We report the preliminary results of PrestoPRIME, an EU FP7 integrated project, including audiovisual (AV) archives, academics and industrial partners, focused on long-term digital preservation of AV media objects and on ways to increase access by integrating media archives with European on-line digital libraries, specifically Europeana. Project outcomes will result in tools and services to ensure the permanence of digital AV content in archives, libraries, museums and other collections, enabling long-term future access in dynamically changing contexts. PrestoPRIME has a special focus on digital preservation in broadcast environments, where very large files of digital video must be preserved at high quality (suitable for future re-use in an AV production environment) in affordable distributed and federated archives. The adoption of standard solutions for digital preservation processes (metadata representation, content storage, digital rights government, search and access) enables the interoperability of the proposed preservation framework and guidelines. OAIS model was chosen for the reference architecture, METS is adopted as wrapper for metadata representation, while relevant standards (e.g. W3C, ISO/IEC and others) are used for content and rights description. Project outcomes will be delivered through a European networked Competence Centre, to gather knowledge and deliver advanced digital preservation advice and services in conjunction with Europeana and other initiatives.

A Primer on Codecs for Moving Image and Sound Archives: 10 Recommendations for Codec Selection and Management

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions has released A Primer on Codecs for Moving Image and Sound Archives: 10 Recommendations for Codec Selection and Management.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

One area of great concern for the integrity and persistence of digital audio and video files is the selection of file formats and codecs… Though this is also an area where there is a great lack of certainty and clarity on the issue.

This paper by Chris Lacinak lays out a clear explanation of what codecs are, how they are used, and what their selection and application means to archives. Also provided are 10 recommendations that will help you in the selection and management of codecs in an archival setting.

Digging into Data Challenge Projects Funded

JISC has announced that eight projects have been awarded Digging into Data Challenge grants.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"Data mining and analysis are not just for scientists" is the message coming strongly out of an international JISC-funded competition, the "Digging into Data Challenge."

Entrants have been challenged to answer the question "what would you do with a million books? Or a million pages of newspapers? Or a million photographs of artworks?" That is, how can analysis done over immense quantities of digital data be employed in humanities and social science research? What would you do with a million books? Or a million pages of newspapers? Or a million photographs of artworks?

Eight international research teams from the UK, US and Canada will be using a variety of data analysis tools to demonstrate that techniques currently used in the sciences can leverage open, new avenues for scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

The winners of the competition are announced today by the four leading research agencies sponsoring the competition: JISC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), both of the United States.

Investment from the four agencies together amounts to over a million pounds, allowing new links to be forged across the different countries, as well as breaking down disciplinary boundaries.

Here are the funded projects

  • Data Mining with Criminal Intent: George Mason University, University of Alberta, and University of Hertfordshire
  • Digging into Image Data to Answer Authorship Related Questions: Michigan State University, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and University of Sheffield
  • Digging into the Enlightenment: Mapping the Republic of Letters: University of Oklahoma, University of Oxford, and Stanford University
  • Harvesting Speech Datasets for Linguistic Research on the Web: McGill University and Cornell University
  • Mining a Year of Speech: University of Oxford and University of Pennsylvania
  • Railroads and the Making of Modern America—Tools for Spatio-Temporal Correlation, Analysis, and Visualization: University of Portsmouth and University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • Structural Analysis of Large Amounts of Music Information: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, University of Southampton, and McGill University
  • Towards Dynamic Variorum Editions: Mount Allison University, Imperial College, London, and Tufts University

Multimedia Deposits: Complications and Considerations with Intellectual Property Rights

The Welsh Repository Network has released Multimedia Deposits: Complications and Considerations with Intellectual Property Rights .

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this learning object is to explore the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that may be within multimedia items, and to highlight some of the complications and considerations that need to be taken into account before a deposit of this type can be made into a repository.

Following two short introductions to multimedia and to copyright, questions are then posed on some of the details of copyright within varying item types. Feedback on, and an explanation to, the question's answers are given. Also included is a short exercise looking at what needs to be taken into consideration before allowing a performance video item into a repository. The learning object concludes with a look at Performers' Rights and highlights what repository staff should be aware of in regard to this IPR within potential repository deposits.

Also available as a Zip file.

Indiana University Bloomington Media Preservation Survey

Indiana University Bloomington has released its Media Preservation Survey.

Here's an excerpt:

The survey task force recommends a number of actions to facilitate the time-critical process of rescuing IUB’s audio, video, and film media.

  • Appoint a campus-wide taskforce to advise
    • the development of priorities for preservation action
    • the development of a campus-wide preservation plan
    • how units can leverage resources for the future
  • Create a centralized media preservation and digitization center that will serve the entire campus, using international standards for preservation transfer. As part of the planning for this center, hire a
    • media preservation specialist
    • film archivist
  • Develop special funding for the massive and rapid digitization of the treasures of IU over the next 10 years.
  • Create a centralized physical storage space appropriate for film, video, and audio.
  • Provide archival appraisal and control across campus to
    • assure quality of digitization for preservation
    • oversee plans for maintaining original media
  • Develop cataloging services for special collections to improve intellectual control to
    • accelerate research opportunities
    • improve access.

CONTENTdm Image Viewer: dmMonocle 1.0 Released

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries have released dmMonocle 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the project page:

dmMonocle is a stand-alone image viewer for CONTENTdm® collections, intended as a replacement for the default image viewer provided with CONTENTdm® 4.x and 5.x. The goal of the project is to make CONTENTdm® images, such as photos, maps, and scanned documents, easier to view and navigate. dmMonocle is written in JavaScript using jQuery, and provides patrons with the ability to zoom, pan, and rotate images on the fly without reloading the entire page. dmMonocle slices up large images into smaller square tiles, loading only the tiles in the visible area, much like Google Maps. In addition to the improved main viewing area, dmMonocle provides a thumbnail-sized navigator, showing patrons which part of the larger image they are viewing. The navigator may also be used to quickly move around an image

"Systems for Managing Digital Media Collections"

JISC Digital Media has released "Systems for Managing Digital Media Collections."

Here's an excerpt :

Everyone's collection and context is unique, so your choice of a system (or systems) for managing your media will require a careful assessment of your needs and resources and an evaluation of the available options. This paper provides an overview of a number of different approaches to digital media management: from some very cheap and 'low-tech' approaches to much more complex and specialised solutions. Another paper in this series discusses some of the commonly available functionality in more detail and raises some key questions to consider when choosing a system . . .

We have given more than thirty examples of systems below, with links to further descriptions on JISC Digital Media's website or to external sites. These examples are not meant to be exhaustive or to imply any sort of endorsement or criticism: they are offered for information purposes only. This is a competitive and fast-changing environment, in which new versions are pushed out, new systems emerge, and last year's cutting-edge features become standard issue.

Omeka Image Annotation Plugin 1.0 Beta

The Center for History and New Media, George Mason University has released the Image Annotation Plugin 1.0 beta for Omeka.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Have you ever wanted to annotate your images on Omeka like you can on Flickr?

Now you can with the beta release of Omeka's Image Annotation plugin! Using an adaptation of Chris Woods' jQuery plugin, jquery-image-annotate, Omeka's new Image Annotation plugin allows users to add textual annotations to images. To add an image annotation, users select a region of the image and then attach a textual description.

Sound Archives Film Image Repository Project: SAFIR Final Report

JISC has released the Sound Archives Film Image Repository Project's SAFIR Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The SAFIR project has achieved what it set out to do, to begin the task of building a multimedia repository infrastructure for the University of York. The project has successfully implemented software for the storage layer (Fedora Commons), along with an interface (Muradora) and has populated that repository with a pilot collection of images. It has implemented a degree of access control, developed metadata profiles, recommendations, policies, licences and copyright clearance procedures, implemented a basic level of interoperability and gathered knowledge and expertise. SAFIR has been a success although there is much more work ahead at York. There is a balance to be struck between taking time to consult and absorb best practice in order to make the best, sustainable decisions and the pressures of immediate needs and project deadlines. Having a JISC deadline has kept the project focussed and although we have tried to ensure that the right decisions were made, we may have sacrificed "best possible" in order to meet an immediate need, for example in our metadata profile decisions or our use of Muradora as an interface. In choosing open source software, in particular Fedora Commons, our development and implementation path is made longer, but the benefits of increased flexibility, building sustainable in-house skill and working in the wider context were seen to outweigh the benefits offered by a commercial solution. Whether this was the right decision remains to be seen, but the enthusiasm and commitment of the Digital Library team have galvanised around that decision. We have already faced a number of technical delays because of unforeseeable issues with the software and we must continue to ensure that sufficient development time is allocated to tasks. We have significant concerns about the maturity and support of some of the software tested for the project. Managing expectations and working with users is an ongoing process and requires significant attention.