Corporación de Puerto Rico para la Difusión Pública - CPRDP
Overview of the Media Asset Management Project and the Documentation Department

The Media Asset Management Project is part of the conversion to a digital infrastructure of the Historical Archive of the Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPRDP). The CPRDP has two television stations - WIPR TV, WIPM TV - as well as two radio stations - WIPR AM, WIPR FM. The CPRDP AM radio station started operations in 1955 while the first television broadcast occurred in 1958.

CPRDP Digitalization Project

The Digitalization Project of the CPRDP came into being approximately in 2001, before we had initiated the organization of our Historical Archive, in the summer of 2002. The CPRDP started with the acquisition and installation of the broadcasting servers followed by other conversions into a digital infrastructure in the News department as well as in the post-production facilities. Later on, the Historical Archive MAM project became a way to insert us within the parameters of the Digitalization Plan of the CPRDP, using the latest technology advances to facilitate access, cataloguing, preservation and content production. Our understanding and proposal were from the perspective of a TV station, which posed a set of different problems in areas such as technology, access, preservation, in comparison to the traditional audiovisual archive environment.

CPRDP Media Archives

The Historical Archive is the oldest among the three media archives within the station. These are : the News Archive, the Videotheque and the Historical Archive. In the summer of 2002, those facilities did not share information within the station's Intranet and also lacked the necessary infrastructure, such as temperature and humidity controlled vaults. Since then, several areas have been strengthened in order to organize and modernize the actual Historical Archive infrastructure and services. During the last 11 months a group of four persons has performed activities such as inventories, cleaning of materials, data entry, cataloging and acquisition of equipment. Also important, some infrastructure components were added to the Historical Archive: an office wagon, two media transfer units, re-conditioning of one of two storage containers, and the research and acquisition of a Media Asset Management system.

Our legacy collection consists of over 7.000 records of film and videotapes, dating from 1955. Today, we know the range and size of our collection through catalogues and with a first generation database. We hope that we will have the MAM system set up by November 2003, and we think that by March 2004 we will have the infrastructure, personnel and procedures in place.

Our strategic goal is to establish a Documentation Department up and running by July 2004 as a component of the workflow of the Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Annex Building Project

On October 2002, we received the excellent news that the Historical Archive/Documentation Department Project would receive the necessary funds to create an annex building for the Documentation Department. Another project started within the project, the design of a building that will house the existing three archives of the station : News Archive, the Videotheque and the Historical Archive.

The building has become an important component of our overall project. The building has two components : the construction of a 73 spaces parking lot as well as a two floors building that will accommodate temperature and humidity controlled vaults, the Documentation department administrative offices with a technical area where activities such as inspection and cleaning, migration to other formats such as digitalization to Digital Beta Video tape and servers will take place; and an audiovisual room with a capacity for 50 persons (a multipurpose room for screenings, focus groups, press conferences, tele-conferences, seminars, etc.).

The Project Team

• Ms. Linda Hernandez - President of the CPRDP
• Ms. Maria Reina de la Puebla - Programing Director
• Mr. Angel F. Rivera - Historical Archive
• Mr. Junior Alvarez - Systems Department Director
• Mr. Jorge Gonzalez - Engineering Department Director
• Mr. Luis Rosario Albert - Consultant for Historical Archive Project / Documentation Department

Starting from the Historical Archive - The legacy collection

We consider the MAM project as a strategic one that occurs with the digitalization of the broadcasting facilities of the station. By starting from the Historical Archive Project, we will be able to implement the Media Management Project within specific parameters of a legacy collection of videotapes and films. After that experience that we believe should be complete within the next 8 to 10 months, the Documentation Department personnel will be able to gather a more specific knowledge as to what are the best ways to approach the everyday activity of the TV station. From that experience we'll be in a better position to undertake the workflow of the station that covers the Programming Dept., the Engineering Dept. with the Broadcasting servers, and the Post-production facilities.

We think that a new approach should be taken. Traditionally the Archive is the last point on the chain of production of a TV station. Usually, a researcher considers request for footage without having a comprehensive understanding of the use of that footage. We feel that our archive, and our researchers, should be at the beginning of the production phase, as part of the production team, which are the content producers.

Then our MAM Project also involves a different understanding of how a TV archive should work within the workflow of a TV station. We are looking at an integral solution that addresses the access need as well as the preservation need. Local presence is very important. Short-term access will be via Intranet and Internet. Long-term preservation will be based on tapes and servers. The system will provide on-line access for Internet users in low resolution as well as high-resolution, copies via Intranet for the editing suites and the Documentation Department.

Conversions between MPEG formats, FIAT metadata standards, digital videotape format and servers, hard disks, high and low resolution back up, tape storage in adequate environment (vault) are some of the issues under consideration. The research of our project showed different manufacturers with different solutions, but of particular interest are the following companies with solutions designed especially for television stations: IBM, Blue Order, Sony, Nesbit and others.

Radio Stations Legacy Collection

The Documentation Department was recently instructed to expand its range of action to cover sound recordings, in order to provide the necessary infrastructure and expertise to growing collection of the CPRDP radio stations. Sound recordings materials, dating from 1954, will also be part of our access and preservations efforts, and they will benefit from our MAM project. During the last months, we performed inspection and inventories activities on over 1,000 sound recordings. Finally, one important trait of the MAM project design is, that it should also allow for the digitalization and access of content, such as sound and stills, through our server and Intranet and Internet services.

Luis Rosario Albert - lrosario@cprdp.gobierno.pr
Consultant - Historical Archive Project / Documentation Department
30 May 2003

CPRDP web site : http://tutv.puertorico.pr