Dennis Haarsager's rolling environmental scan for electronic media. "Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us." --Jerry Garcia
Here's Dublin Core's news story about PBCore. --Dennis. The inaugural version of the Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary (PBcore), a standard way to describe all public broadcasting content based on Dublin Core metadata, is being finalized for the launch of version 1.0 in September 2004. ... DCMI News link
To metatadata or not to metadata, that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous search results
Or to take up metadata against a sea of irrelevance
And by organizing them, find them?
With all due apologies to the Bard, the questions of whether to add metadata to unstructured content and how much effort is really justified to do so have been raised with increasing frequency and vigor in the last year. ¶ These issues and more were explored last year at the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) 2003 Workshop. While some participants argued for a drastic reduction in metadata efforts or at least rethinking those efforts, other participants offered new ideas of how to create valuable metadata and how to generate value from metadata. ¶ A couple of things have become increasingly clear: Metadata is not going away and there is no one simple solution to how to add metadata and maximize its value. Consequently, what we are going to do in this article is take a look at some of the basic issues around adding metadata to unstructured content and explore a range of approaches that various groups and software vendors are trying. We will then examine how a broader view of metadata, beyond simply adding keywords to documents, is leading to a more sophisticated, multi-dimensional or infrastructure-based approach to metadata that supports a smarter balance of both more and less metadata. ... EContentMag.com link
IBM, Microsoft, and academic researchers are trying to invent ways to find specific images in video footage. ¶
For 20 years, computer scientists have been working on improving ways to search among reams of video clips for a particular shot. New research by IBM, Microsoft, and academic teams studying the problem could bring them a step closer to that goal. ¶ At a conference in Cambridge, England, last week, an IBM researcher gave the first public demonstration of a computer system called Marvel that uses statistical techniques to learn about relationships between colors, shapes, patterns, sounds, and other clues from video footage that can help identify its content. IBM's prototype then labels the footage so users can go back and find individual shots. That could be a boon not only to TV news producers but intelligence analysts watching surveillance video and even PC users editing home movies. ... InformationWeek link
There's been a relaunch of the web site for the Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary project (PBCore), generously hosted by the University of Utah and maintained by the indefatigable Paul Burrows. In addition to the home URL, it is now accessible from the easier to remember pbcore.org.
Readers might also be interested in a short essay, Public Broadcasting's Future Is PBCore's Future, by myself, Marcia Brooks at WGBH, and James Steinbach at Wisconsin Public Television. It was included as part of the deliverables for the project which developed PBCore, is posted in the Continuation area below, and as a pdf on my web site, technology360.org. --Dennis
The inaugural version of PBCore (Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary), a standard way to describe all public broadcasting content, has emerged from the Test Implementation phase and is being finalized for the launch of version 1.0 in September 2004. Under development since January 2002, PBCore is the result of unprecedented cross-organizational cooperation by a team of public radio and television producers and managers, archivists and information scientists. ¶ A common metadata protocol is fundamental to public broadcasting's ability to work in collaborative environments to deliver and exchange content across new digital distribution platforms. PBCore will enable more efficient and cost-effective ways to leverage content and service partnerships to serve existing and new constituents. PBCore will facilitate new production collaborations and the ability to parse traditional programs into short segments for Web distribution or as niche content for specific community, service and institutional needs. For these applications where granular manipulation and interoperability are required, PBCore will be essential. [continued below]Market Wire link
It is common to hear members of the digital library community debating the relative merits of the two most common rights expression languages (RELs) ... and which is preferable for digital library systems. Such debates are, in my opinion, premature and should be postponed until this community has developed a clear set of requirements for rights management in its environment, including rights expression, the encoding of license terms, and file protection. ¶ This article is intended to provoke discussion of those requirements, and it attempts to do so by illustrating aspects of the current developments in rights management that may be problematic for digital libraries. This does not mean that the digital library community will need to develop its own rights language and rights management solution, separate from the existing standards in this area. It means that at this moment in time we do not have sufficient information about our own rights management needs to evaluate any particular solution nor to negotiate for extensions to accommodate digital library functionality. ... Ariadne link
Who among us wouldn't like to remodel a living room for $1,000 or make crispy duck salad with bitter orange vinaigrette in less than 30 minutes? Any fan of Scripps Networks' collection of home and hospitality cable channels, which includes The Food Network and Home & Garden Television, and which currently has a combined 209 million subscriptions, knows such things are possible. ¶ The problem for most people is finding the time to watch the programs that offer those tips, which is why Scripps now delivers video content to consumers via both the Internet and digital cable. For individuals who subscribe to either service, segments from popular series like Before and After and 30-Minute Meals with Rachel Ray are literally at their fingertips. What makes this possible on the back end is Scripps' digital asset management (DAM) system. ... PC Magazine link
As television stations go digital, the problem of managing digital assets is becoming more and more of a concern. Analog assets, that in the past were logged and scheduled for play-to-air, now have to be manipulated entirely by their metadata — a database of auxiliary information about content that grows with each step in the content’s life cycle from production to distribution. Hence it’s not only TV stations that rely on metadata, it’s everyone from the content creator to the distributor, and each step along the way, different types of metadata are necessary to drive back-office applications. ... DTV Professional link
After a remarkable two-year collaborative effort led by CPB and WGBH, the Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary ("PB Core") is moving toward launch. I've been fortunate to participate in this effort, but a number of others have done the heavy lifting. I would add that PB Core is perhaps the most remarkable collaboration I’ve ever seen, incorporating the asset management needs of public radio and television, national distributors and local stations, producers and broadcast stations.
The timing is perfect: in television, PBS is rolling out both the NGIS and ACE initiatives; in radio the NPRPRSS is rolling out the ContentDepot and an innovative program marketing and DRM system called Public Radio Exchange (PRX) has begun; and public broadcasters associated with the Integrated Media Association believe that broadband is beginning to gel as a third public medium. Public stations across the country are facing the implications of "going digital," both over the air and over new platforms. A host of new services are in the offing. There's system-wide focus on most effective use of resources. At the core of all this is a common metadata standard – the lingua franca of public broadcasting’s digital transition.
Test implementation is wrapping up this month and we hope to release results from that phase by mid-July and publish the dictionary in the fall. A news release from WGBH can be accessed in the continuation below. A paper presented at the Dublin Core2003 Conference entitled "PB Core -- The Public Broadcasting Metadata Initiataive: Progress Report" is available at technology360.org/PB_core_DC03.pdf. Project updates, presentations, background articles, and resources are available on the PBMD Web site at http://www.utah.edu/cpbmetadata/. --Dennis
