NINCH guide home interview table of contents previous interview
HATII interviewed Mary Ide, Director of the Media Archives and Preservation Center at WGBH, and Thom Shepard, Systems Programmer/Analyst, on January 25 2001. The Center is responsible for the construction and maintenance of the digital asset management system, which aims to preserve the considerable volume of material produced by WGBH, for the benefit of the public broadcasting industry. The advantages of digitally archiving the output of WGBH are largely industry-based, however, a subsidiary benefit is the potential for the material to be used for educational or research purposes.
WGBH is public broadcasting’s largest producer of nationally distributed programs and has been in the broadcasting business for 50 years. Their productions make up one-third of PBS prime-time lineup. Their radio productions are distributed nationally and internationally. The Media Archives and Preservation Center preserves WGBH television and radio programs, production media, photographic assets, data files and historical records. They hold approximately half a million items, including:
A WGBH Media Archives and Preservation Center leaflet describes its organizational aims:
“Now, in the digital age of multimedia databases, online services and video on demand, WGBH has the responsibility – and the opportunity – to make this educational treasure available through new technologies, and to provide access to a growing inventory of original and archival footage, photographs, research materials and written transcripts. Preservation makes good business sense, too, allowing WGBH to meet the demands for rebroadcast, home-video sales and other emerging market opportunities for its programs.”
Prioritization of digitization decisions in this area is quite different from the academic community. The primary driving forces are production and business opportunities and sales. Archival reasons follow. Institutional values, research reasons, re-use values, and cost of retention issues play a subsequent role. For example, institutional values can include:
Re-use values might include:
Cost of retention values might be:
One of the obstacles to planning and delivering the development of digital deliverables is funding (mainly internal in this case) – it is not easy to convince the organization to invest very large sums on archiving. This demands a high level of organizational cooperation and buy-on of the main idea. Staffing, technology and standards present continual challenges to be met.
Source material includes video, audio, film, paper, and computer discs.
In terms of data standards, the special projects use modified Library of Congress subject headings.
They are designing the digital asset management system primarily to support all operations of the organization. They can use it for internal research, re-broadcasting, selling videos and supporting educational programs.
Twelve people work at Archives. Four of them are trained archivists, the rest come from a production background.
One of the quality assurance procedures they use is to review the data entry form.
All material is within copyright, and is generally a very complex area for this type of organization.
They are currently planning a pilot. They will carry out extensive analysis of the needs of the organization and analysis of the workflow.
There is a limited budget for reformatting material in-house. There are discussions at the moment about preservation.
The originals are cataloged using FileMaker and Oracle. The organization is currently trying to move everything to Oracle and integrate about half a million records in one system. This is a very messy process and they are trying to develop a standard vocabulary. This is not easy, as part of the data is often entered by busy people at the production floor, rather than archivists or information professionals. They are working on adapting Dublin Core.
They are currently testing Artesia Technologies' TEAMS digital asset management product. Current work includes modifying data structures and metadata fields to use in the new system. The first type of metadata is about Physical Control, where Elements include:
The second type concerns Intellectual Control, where Programs include information about:
From Betacam SP they convert to QuickTime, then compress for streaming with MediaCleaner and save on Digital Video Tape.
A pilot is currently underway, with documentaries for a web project with extra production material that was never included in the show. They are focus-testing this with targeted audiences.
Funding is internal by the organization.
WGBH is planning a major change in the way it handles its assets, both digital and analog, but the specifics at present are uncertain and it is undergoing a period of change and experimentation. In terms of digitization processes and management of metadata they are still in a developmental stage. There are many interesting issues that have to do both with the nature of the organization, which is very different from an academic or public cultural institution, and with the nature of the material.