MIDESS Management of Images in a Distributed Environment using Shared Services. Dr Stephen Charles MIDESS Project Manager

MIDESS Project Looking at the issues involved in using and sharing multimedia material (not just images!) in digital repositories. Areas of interest.  Interoperability between different repositories (DSpace, Fedora, DigiTool)  Metadata schemas/metadata for multimedia  Integration with Enterprise Architecture  Long term preservation of digital material

MIDESS Project MIDESS partners are: University of Birmingham University of Leeds London School of Economics (LSE) University College London (no repository installed as part of MIDESS project – examined copyright issues around multimedia). Sponsored by the JISC and by CURL

Digital Repository Software evaluated in depth as part of the MIDESS project Dspace (open source) Fedora (open source) Greenstone (open source) Encompass/Curator (commercial) DigiTool (commercial) Symposia (commercial) Detailed evaluation of all products on MIDESS website (Work Package 3)

MIDESS work-packages User needs analysis Functional and technical evaluation of digital repository software packages Implementation of digital repository. Metadata requirements analysis Digital preservation requirements analysis Enterprise integration Copyright and IPR review Resource discovery and shared services review Metadata Harvesting Evaluation and dissemination

Enterprise Integration: Streamed Server and SAN MIDESS video and sound material stored in a MIDESS repository is streamed from a Helix streamed server (Example in demonstration) Integration with Storage Area Network (SAN). Flexibility in speed of access dependent upon where files are stored on the SAN.

Digital Collections at the MIDESS Partners These include: Medical images - slides/x-rays, etc.(Birmingham/Leeds) Dialect recordings (Leeds School of English) Fine art images (Birmingham/Leeds) Digitised pages from manuscripts and other Library special collections (Leeds/Birmingham/LSE) Images of textiles (Leeds Textile Museum) Images and video from Media Services (LSE/Birmingham/Leeds/) Recordings of music (Birmingham/Leeds) Training/E-learning material/video of lectures etc (LSE/Birmingham/Leeds/)

Manuscripts (Birmingham/ Leeds,) Coins (Birmingham,Leeds) Medical images (Leeds, Birmingham) Media Services Images (LSE, Leeds,, Birmingham)

Sharing Data across Repositories What are the best techniques? OAI-PMH (Metadata Harvesting)? But doesn’t harvest the bitstream (image, video, sound etc). Export of files eg METS? Export from underlying database (Oracle, SQL Server MySQL etc)?

Next Step - Integration of Digital Library Systems The ultimate goal is to integrate the following seamlessly: Digital repositories (Scholarly repository, Multimedia repository, e-learning repository etc) VLE’s Portal Systems Library Management Systems Electronic Journals etc.

Digital Repositories requirements/wish list Improved Digital Preservation support - system addition of technical/preservation metadata and updating of formats. Flexible metadata standards (not just Dublin Core/qualified Dublin Core). May include: VRA Core/LOM/bespoke metadata schemas (schemas should be easy to create) etc. Highly CUSTOMISABLE digital repository systems which can be EASILY tailored (ideally without resorting to Java/complex programming etc).

Digital Repositories requirements/wish list Flexibility in authentication using techniques such as IP address restrictions, LDAP (Windows active directory), Shibboleth, Passwords etc. Ability to handle content packaging standards for e- learning (eg IMS, SCORM etc). Library based repositories are poor at this. Ability to easily interface with other systems eg: Library Systems, Portals, Virtual Learning Environment’s etc).

Multimedia Demonstration Repositories DSpace Birmingham Fedora LSE Leeds Zoomify (protects high resolution images)

Summary Setting up digital repositories requires a lot of work! No such thing (yet) as the ideal Digital Repository software, all have strengths and weaknesses. Important to understand user requirements before you start. Its early days for digital repositories – numerous improvements on the way.

Questions? Dr Stephen Charles MIDESS Project Manager Edward Boyle Library University of Leeds Phone Project website: