VIDEO ACTIVE Creating Access to European Television History Project Update FIAT World Conference, Lisbon October 15th, 2007 Alexander Hecht (ORF, A) – Richard Wright (BBC, UK)

Goal Giving access to television heritage –Reflecting the cultural and historical similiarities and differences of television across the European Union –User groups Education General Public Cultural Heritage Creative industries

The Project eContentplus programme 36 months –Start date: September 2006 –Launch first version of the portal: November 2007 Proven technology: Birth of TV ( ) items by 2009

The consortium 14 members from 10 countries 11 content providers / 10 languages

Associate members VRT (B) Moving Images Communications (UK)

Advisory board IASA FIAT EBU BFI Joanneum Research University of Madrid

Content selection strategy Framework designed in collaboration with academics (London conference April 07) historical axis (e.g. technology developements) themes and genres (e.g. sports, game shows, education, celebrity, TV on TV, National Holidays, etc.)

Portal Open Archives Initiative The European Library Workflow ThesauriX Contribution Tool

First screen design

Why join? Highly visible window to your collection Multilingual access to your holdings Revenue from increased sales

Join Video Active! please contact Prof. Dr. Sonja de Leeuw (Project Coordinator) Utrecht University Johan Oomen MA (Technical Director) Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Who Needs VideoActive? (now that we have You Tube) Or – the INs and OUTs of context and competence in online collections IN: Context – putting all the relevant information into the collection OUT: Competence – metadata and tools to ensure users find what’s in the collection

Providing Context Three aspects of the full picture: A framework for an item –For search (including browsing) and for presentation Information about an item –All the components and all the metadata Relationships –Inward- what points to the item? –Outward- what does the item point to?

Context: A framework for an item For search (browsing) and for presentation –Historical –Social –When and where (and who) –Technological Search: for any part of the context Browse: within a context Find: results presented with context

Context

Information about an “item” All the components and all the metadata –Storyboard, summary, audio, video Plus catalogue data: who, when, where, what … –Publicity still (and other stills) –Short articles (about the context) Golden age of television drama Development of news presentation formats

Relationships Inward- what points to the item? Outward- what does the item point to?

What points to “coronation”? Royalty Early television 1930’s; 1950’s (in UK) Outside broadcast Westminster Abbey Names: participants, presenters “Coronation Street” ??

What does Coronation point to? Participants Location Time period “Coronation Street” And – points a UK researcher to “other coronations”, and how they were presented by television

“Creating Access” Video Active ‘creates access’ – but Video Active has a context Projects of all sizes –Individual institutions –National –European –Global –Universal! You Tube, and why it matters what it does well what it doesn’t even try to do

individual archive access ranging from the smallest to the 15,000 online hours of the Institute National de l’Audiovisuel Video Active has made a list of over 100 such projects: del.icio.us/VideoActivedel.icio.us/VideoActive –Is unified access to all these individual online collections possible? –Video Active collects only a sample Of the institutions, and of the content of each

national projects addressing the audiovisual heritage, notably the Dutch “Images for the Future” –Pictures Forever –Common ‘pot of money’ for national audiovisual content –Goal: create access, create business By getting the material where public and private enterprises can use it In particular: education

European coordination projects Digital libraries: –TEL: The European Library; union catalogue –EDL: European Digital Library edlproject.eu/ Video Active: audiovisual content for EDLedlproject.eu/ Digital preservation: –Caspar: OAIS; scientific and artistic –Planets: DL tools planets-project.eu/planets-project.eu/ –DPE = Digital Preservation Europe digitalpreservationeurope.eu/

Projects with a global view Audiovisual preservation and access: FIAT – UNESCO Archives at Risk (there are other ‘endangered archive’ projects, but not primarily for audiovisual content: UNESCO – British Library “Endangered Archives” )

Online video in general: YouTube: –where people can put anything –and nobody can find it BUT –95% of all YouTuve video is viewed every day! –YouTube has an excellend ‘contribution tool’, and provided free hosting –So: just add metadata!! (= Video Active)

Thank You Prof. Dr. Sonja de Leeuw (Project Coordinator) - Utrecht University Johan Oomen MA (Technical Director) Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision