Media Management seminar 2007
Changing sceneries, changing roles / Update - 3 years later
...
A seminar for audio-visual documentalists, archivists, cataloguers
and middle management
11 & 12 May 2007, Vienna (Austria)
Report and papers
BBC Media Managers who attended the seminar have produced the
following summary reports of each of the sessions at the Media
Management Commission Seminar held at the University of Vienna on
11-12th May 2007. The seminar was attended by archivists, media
managers and documentalists from across Europe. It was hosted by
Herbert Hayduck and Christoph Bauer from the Austrian broadcaster,
ORF.
The forum, split into 5 sections over 2 days, was an update of the
MMC seminar held three years earlier in
Amsterdam
You can also get the complete report as a 79 Ko .pdf file
Final Report MMC Seminar Vienna 2007
(accès libre)
Theme 1 - What is the
goal of all audiovisual archives ?
Report by Douglas Millan
Introduction, by Herbert Hayduck,
ORF
Herbert, Vice-Head of the ORF's TV-archive,
kicked off the proceedings with an introduction into the changing
roles of the documentalist. He said that at the seminar in Amsterdam
there had been a feeling of "doom" about role of the archivist, that,
due to digitisation, the role of the archivist and archives
themselves would disappear as tapes vanished. However, he concluded
that the role of the archivist and archives would not disappear, but
would, in fact, change.
The changes would be threefold :
- Digitisation would lead to direct access
to content on a scale never seen before, meaning the 21st century
archivist would need to manage this differently
- Direct access and would free up more
time for the 21st century archivist to be more creative with
content.
- The technology used to make the archive
more direct would necessitate a new dialogue between archivists
and users taking advantage of the archive.
Herbert's introduction ended with a short
video which succinctly described what the role of the archivist is at
the moment.
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What is the business of archives ? by Alwyn
Lindsey, Associated Press
This presentation was given by Alwyn, from
Associated Press. Alwyn said that when he started at AP, the term
"Library" was derogatory and there was no investment into the
archives, but now that had completely changed. This was due, in some
part, by the emergence of more television channels. This, in turn,
meant there was more demand for programs which meant greater use of
the archive. In addition, he said, content "became king" (indeed, AP
had spent $282m on buying PA's archive.). Also, with the dotcom boom,
there were different ways emerging to get the content to the users-
with databases and content delivered online, by web
access.
Alwyn also discussed AP's ongoing
digitisation project. How AP captures all footage daily whilst also
encoding their "greatest hits." In addition AP's archive tries to
"second guess" what their users will want or need. The benefits of
this are that now users can "buy before [they] try," there
are more resources that can be diverted to conservation, new markets
were opening up and internally people were being educated as to what
the AP archive actually held.
He concluded that these new ways of working
would not replace people.
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Commercial and cultural goals : is there
still a difference? by Karin Westerink, Beeld en Geluid
This presentation was delivered by Karin
from B&G, and posed the question "what had happened since
Amsterdam ?"
She informed the conference that B&G's
new building had opened and was remarkable. The glass panels on the
outside of the building had film stills on the glass, stressing their
mission to give people access to the archive. Indeed, there were
3,000 visitors weekly! Currently the project "Images of the future"
needed to return £19m. What needed to be done was to get the
content to the customer via videos available on the internet on
platforms like YouTube and Joost. How archives coped was to make
their content easier to find on those platforms - through metadata or
cataloguing. There ambitions, she concluded, went beyond commercial,
that cataloguing was heritage driven as well as commercially driven,
that they would become specialists in their field.
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BFI National Archive, by Charles Fairall,
British Film Institute
Charles rounded off the first part of the
seminar with a presentation on his role in the BFI. He said his role
was to protect and develop the archive, to make it available to users
so that it would entertain and educate, through
documentation.
Chris stated he was leading the development
of the BFI's archive and that he was working with other companies to
restore and achieve standards of preservation for new audiences and
to promote better understanding of audio visual archives everywhere.
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Theme 2 - Does technology improve the workflow?
Report by Joe Sandford
Technology has unquestionably changed the
way we work. The move towards digital end-to-end production of
audio-visual material has brought about a need for archiving to begin
at the creation of an asset rather than sitting at the end of its
lifecycle. How we tag, catalogue, store and re-use these digital
assets are issues we are all currently dealing with.
How we can use these new technologies to
improve our workflows was discussed on the first day of the MMC
seminar by Giorgio Dimino from RAI, Irmgard Noordhoek from the
Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid and Joan Murphy and Claire
McLoughlin from RTE.
The MAD part in Prestospace, by Giorgio
Dimino, RAI
As an introduction to the topic Giorgio
suggested that the answer depends on choosing the appropriate
technology and planning exactly how it will fit into the workflow.
Without the appropriate preparation bottlenecks will form in the work
processes. This preparation depends on the scale of the project (the
more people are involved in the workflow, the more chance there is of
bottlenecks and the more preparation is needed), and on the
technology being used - for example when ISDN lines were all we had
to transfer digital files the process was that much slower than when
Broadband/high-speed links were introduced.
So while technology can improve the
archiving process in many cases it cannot replace the need for human
input, some of the cost savings from replacing manual processes are
eaten up by the design and deployment of automatic systems, and
machines will never produce 100% error-free data.
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As an example Giorgio went on to discuss the
Prestospace project and in particular the MAD (Metadata, Access &
Delivery) stream. An important point to note is that the use of new
technology within this project has always been done with the
appreciation that human beings cannot be completely substituted by
automatic processes, they must remain as managers of the workflow and
specific tasks within these workflows. One of the first tasks in
setting up any new workflow which contains a certain amount of
automation is to decide where people should monitor the
process.
The specifics of the workflows discussed by
Giorgio can be found in the attached copy of the Powerpoint
presentation.
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Some of the main issues however are
:
- automatic processes can speed up
workflows tremendously but machines have problems when they
encounter 'fuzzy' data. An example is automatic voice recognition.
Machines find changes in diction and accents difficult to
recognise, they also encounter problems when there is strong
background noise or many people talking at once. Also names and
locations can cause problems if they are not in a computer's
dictionary. Automatic voice recognition can achieve about a 90%
success rate but there is usually a need for human intervention to
check the data the system has transcribed.
- machines find it harder to detect story
changes but the following methods can be used :
- Scene change detection (e.g. cuts
between cameras)
- Clustering of similar
scenes
- Audio classifying (changes in music,
noise, speech)
- Voice tracking
- Lexical segmentation (changes in
topics in the text of speech)
- Editorial parts merger
- The effectiveness of any automatic
process depends on the content being automated. News and Current
Affairs will often be easier for a computer to analyze than
fiction. Similarly the right technology needs to be used for the
right job - any system designed for news- based content will not
work well with fiction.
- The amount of automation you can bring
into a workflow will vary according to the work being carried out.
In some cases the process may need to rely mainly on manual
annotation.
In conclusion Giorgio suggested that
technology can set us free from the mundane aspects of our job, and
in some cases greatly speed up some aspects of our workflows, but
only if it is properly managed by humans with the correct technology
used in the right place.
Improving your figure, by Irmgard
Noordhoek, Beeld en Geluid
Talking about the work being carried out in
the Netherlands by B&G, Irmgard suggested that you need to apply
the same criteria to improving your workflow when it comes to
automating the archiving of a TV company as you do when you are
trying to improve your figure.
Irmgard and her team have been dealing with
a situation familiar to most of the participants at the seminar -
their organisation has moved from a tape-based production workflow
where the archive is presented with a tangible asset at the end of
the process to one where digital files are sent to the broadcasting
centre and production is no longer on analogue formats. As well as
dealing with this new 'metadata and essence chain' there is a drive
to digitize the existing legacy archive.
With the new ways of working there have been
benefits - there is no longer a need to select material for archiving
before broadcast; all programmes can now be captured, and the
automatic import of metadata has replaced some of the need for manual
cataloguing.
There have also been changes in the ways
cataloguers work - desktop access to material has made it less
important to catalogue what you see (descriptive cataloguing) and
more important to catalogue what it is about (contextual
cataloguing).
New technologies have also brought about
cost savings - specifically it has meant a reduction in staff.
However, the full costs of bringing about these changes are difficult
to quantify as there are so many hidden costs (including income from
increased sales, and preservation costs of older
material).
These benefits however have to be judged in
light of the following points :
- It was difficult to introduce the new
system and there was resistance from both cataloguers and
programme makers
- There are still more efficient ways the
system could be used
- There is still a need to persuade
content makers to provide the correct metadata
- IT people speak a different
language
- Developing the system was costly and
time consuming
In conclusion then, just as with improving
your figure, it takes a lot of time and effort but it is necessary to
be healthy and work efficiently.
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Technology & workflow : the Beta
approach, by Joan Murphy & Claire McLoughlin, RTE
The final speakers in the technology &
workflow topic at the seminar were Joan and Claire who discussed the
ways in which they had implemented new workflows in the archiving
processes at RTE.
Their first challenge was to document
exactly what RTE did and map these workflows. In doing so it was
important to convince people that they do actually have processes in
the work they do. Talking production staff through the process their
content follows throughout its lifecycle was a good way of making
them aware of these processes and was also a good opportunity to
introduce to them the concept of media management.
Carrying out this work demanded new skills
from the library and archive staff but also created a better
appreciation of the traditional skills of IA professionals within the
organisation.
Positive outcomes included :
- Hands on experience with new
technology
- A chance to come out of the business
silos and see first hand how different parts of the organisation
work
- A better understanding of business
processes and workflows.
Negative outcomes included :
- Working with uncertain
timelines
- No model or template to
follow
- Challenges in communication.
There were of course big impacts on the
libraries and archives department at RTE. New skills were needed and
training had to be carried out for both IA and production staff. New
bridges and new relationships had to be forged between the archive
and production teams. This was positive in that it resulted in
clearer communication and the introduction of new concepts between
departments. However, there were sometimes differing agendas and not
everyone was 'on the same page' at the same time.
The main impact of this Beta project for the
archives department was that IA staff had to learn new skills to work
within the new workflows, but as a result there was more appreciation
by the company of the value they bring to these processes. One of the
main examples of the new skills IA professionals have to develop when
dealing with new technologies is the fact they must learn to be able
to speak not only archive language but also management, production,
and IT languages.
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Conclusion
So in conclusion to the question 'does
technology improve our workflows' the answer seems to be yes (and in
more ways than simply reducing manual process tasks), but only if it
is used in the right place, at the right time, and for the right
task.
Theme 3 - Focus on the process around the technology
Report by Roni Abera
Introduction. Managing the invisible
archive, by Richard Wright, BBC
Richard from the BBC gave a small
presentation as a way of introducing the second phase of the seminar
which opened up the debate of new technology and its impact on our
workflow. New technology will mean new problems. New people will mean
new processes and new access. When the shelves vanish and the
archivists disappear with them they will be replaced by media
managers who will be distributed across production. The invisible
archive will totally be dependent on technology. Richard went on to
say invisible archives have new challenges ahead such as being out of
the archives' control and lack of understanding by the IT world.
So how do we manage new technology and
people? Richard gave examples from BBC's own progress. In 2004 there
were some BBC media managers projects such as the digital play-out
system for various radio stations, namely Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2,
Radio 3 and Radio 4. Content Management culture group was created
which controlled vocabularies and taxonomies. FOI made available a
publication scheme and Electronic Records Management systems were put
in place in various divisions and production areas managing the
information within a Knowledge Management system.
Richard concluded his presentation by saying
that understanding the technology remained vital or media content
would disappear or would not get delivered efficiently.
The 'archive ethos' also remains vital but
has to be maintained by media managers distributed across production
areas.
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The vision and implementation for a
broadcasting company to achieve a tape-less environment, by Eva-Lis
Green & Goran Schon, SVT
This presentation was given by one of the
project managers from SVT who gave input into the changes in
IT-systems and workflows, the implementation phase and the
implications of these changes.
Since 2000, the company has been
broadcasting news and current affairs through two digital channels.
The current focus is on air schedule and first transmission, with the
new focus on file-based publication on multiple platforms. This will
result in change in workflow as all metadata will be collected during
production. Programme makers will be responsible for complete
delivery. And after delivery there will be a 'new owner'. The
presentation went on to explain how they went about trying to achieve
this. They arranged 3 workshops with a total of 120 colleagues and
all workshops had the same outcome that supported what they set out
to do. Board decision was then made to follow workshop input which
was followed by communication of this shared vision.
So what happened? It was not possible for
all metadata to be collected during production and programme makers
did not make complete delivery. However, there is now clear
acknowledgement on delivery, small loop for adjustment, fewer
individuals involved in processes and overall better learning. The IT
support project will finish in late 2007 and organisational changes
are also in progress.
When asked where the archives put in quality
checks Eva responded by saying that they do so at the point of
production.
Eva and Goran concluded the presentation by
saying that we may have to compromise on some of our past standards
in order to encompass the whole breadth of content produced in a
digital world.
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The Digital Library : the heart of BBC
Scotland, by Joanne Evans, BBC
The presentation started with a photo of the
new HQ at Pacific Quay, which illustrated how new premises, new
technology and new ways of working have come together in Glasgow. The
Library now sits at the heart of the production/broadcasting workflow
with late deliveries of pre-records sent straight to play-out. Since
March 2004 they have been working on the designing and building of
the Digital Library by writing requirements, metadata modelling,
designing, building and testing as well as training of
staff.
The presentation explained what the main
aims of the library are :
- It will hold digital file copies of
programmes made in the Radio and TV content production
systems
- It will also hold rushes, stock shots
and compilations of content
- It will be the system used for
delivering copies of programmes to the television play-out area in
Pacific Quay
- It will provide a Rich Media Search
function for users to search across multiple systems
- It will support the principles of
metadata being written once and read by many
- It will be available for everyone in BBC
Scotland from July 2007
When the library is ready for access, its
purpose will be to :
- Maximise use of the BBC
archive
- Save research and cataloguing
time
- Avoid duplicated
originations
- Minimise tape storage space
- Remove tape transfer time
- Allow better rights tracking
- Minimise the need for re-shooting
material
- Safeguard the integrity of the
archive
Where will they be in 3 years time
?
- They will be rolling out to the rest of
the BBC
- They will have integration with similar
technological solutions within the BBC
- They will have a part in the delivering
content to BBC's iPlayer, the new on-demand service
- They will have integration with full
rights clearance system
- And possibly open to public access in
the future
A couple of questions were presented to
Joanne before the end of the presentation.
Who controls metadata requirements and are
there any policies on capturing online content ? The answers were -
media managers control metadata and not production as there are
training issues involved; and general BBC policies for TV and Radio
apply to online content too.
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From 'Documentation and Archives' to 'Teche
Multimedia' : more than a label change, by Theo Maüsli,
RTSI
This presentation introduced the concept of
the 360 digitization which places the archive at the heart of the
digital organisation with the digital library underpinning all
broadcasting activities.
Theo explained that RTSI, which is a small
public service company, doesn't thrive on expansion as such but
concentrate on digitalizing all content, which consists of up to
8.000 hours of Radio and 9.000 hours of TV of new material annually.
They have a multimedia archive to reflect multimedia production.
Files from production are delivered with content and metadata with
direct connection within the traffic system. Files contain all useful
internal and external metadata such as related internet content,
press documentation, reviews, photos and bibliographies.
RTSI works on various projects including
digital preservation of about 40.000 hours of both audio and video
content. The company also works closely with the community. Their
multimedia catalogue offers access to public libraries and
universities. They also have e-learning sites and they contribute to
cultural events and work with historical projects consulting with
students and external researchers. They also offer on-demand
services.
A question of training was raised before the
presentation came to an end. Theo was asked how his company trained
his staff to perform multi skilled tasks in the new multimedia
environment. His surprising response was that university students
replaced old staff of cataloguers and researchers.
Conclusions - the digitization of archives
has pushed a new way of thinking and producing multimedia, the main
challenge still being poor communications and lack of understanding
with the IT world. This evolution has had important implications on
professional profile, performance and the position of the archive in
an organisation. As a consequence, there should be a revaluation of
the role and placement of the archives inside the organisation,
revaluation of the function, profile and salary of the archivist, not
forgetting the importance of continuous change management.
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Theme 4 - Do we need to continue neutral
cataloguing since we target cataloguing to reach specific groups
?
Report by Sue Turner
Is our catalogue still ours ? Annotation in the networked
environment, by Annemieke de Jong, Beeld en Geluid
A very detailed and informative presentation summarising the
changes in the world of Production and Archives and the future role
for Cataloguing, given by Annemieke de Jong , Netherlands Institute
for Sound and Vision. The presentation summarises the past role of
the librarian within the Archive and then explores in depth, and
somewhat provocatively, how this may evolve and change in the new
digital age.
Archives used to operate with "stand alone" catalogues which used
professional standards and objective structured content descriptions.
This meant we could search very specifically and expect good results
but the downside was that it was very labour intensive. The role of
the librarian/cataloguer was to control the data and retrieval of
data. In the digital world there are multiple connections and
dataflows and we are communicating with the external world through
the Internet and our relationships with Production are changed.
"Interactivity" is key and there are three new trends - Annotation
(content) is passed to us through the digital workflow; annotation
generates itself through "automated indexing" and annotation is
generated through "social tagging"..
Annotation passed to us through the workflow requires a system
with excellent interoperability. An excellent MAM (Media Asset
Management) system where production., transmission and archiving are
within one infrastructure. We require common interfaces and protocols
with information standards and business rules. There will be
decentralised addition of metadata (both manually and automatically)
during the production process. The aim is to write once/ read/edit
many. Metadata may be added before and after publication of the final
product. The archive role will be to contextualise, correct, complete
and enrich the metadata. The librarian and cataloguer will be adding
quality and "long term perspective" to the data.
The growth in technology has made automatic indexing possible.
Various technologies can now detect shot changes and camera
movements, there is "face recognition" ; systems which can make
transcripts from the spoken word; teletext, subtitles and captions
can all be captured. If all of these are combined we can have an
autogenerated description. Automated "extra information" in the form
of maps, graphix, timelines can also be added. The presentation
showed slides of how such an automated entry could look . An
example of contextualisation of annotation for different users was
illustrated by the example of the Beeld en Geluid catalogue IMMIX
which can provide a service for the professional user, the general
user accessing it via the internet, those using it for educational
projects and museum visitors.
In addition, we now have the rather scary phenomenom of "social
tagging" whereby multiple users can annotate the catalogue entry by
adding information or keywords. Users can add information to on-line
archive catalogues, for example identifying, tagging and describing
digitized content, or adding more detail to written annotations or
commenting and rating entries. The role of the librarian would be to
coordinate and monitor this information. The Art Museum Social
tagging project is an example of where this collaborative social
tagging is being tried out. Lastly we looked at Folksonomies where
user's own materials are brought online in a collective network .
These offer common infrastructures and collective access and well
known examples are Wikipaedia, Technorati and YouTube. Users may
"tag" the content for retrieval.
Therefore in summary - much metadata can be autogenerated during
the production process. New technologies will autogenerate
descriptions and the benefits are economic, efficiency, access to
more users and the catalogue can be flexible to provide different
information for different users.
The question is what will be the job of the Librarian/ Cataloguer
and the answer is Metadata management. The new role will incorporate
selecting, processing and structuring the incoming metadata; making
metadata definitions and models; making thesauri and wordlists.
Basically enriching the metadata, adding contextualisation and
developing standards. In Annemieke's words auto indexing is still
"dirty" and we need to develop the delivery of semantic content and
context. It is too objective to be of use and does not reflect what
the user groups want. She suggests that we could have 2 parallel
catalogues - one using social tagging and one using professional
tagging.
To return finally to the opening question "is the Catalogue ours?"
The answer appears to be yes but not entirely - it now also belongs
to Production and the users. Metadata from both will become a regular
feed to our catalogues and use of professional cataloguing standards
will decrease. There will be more Recall, less Precision and the
inevitable loss of accuracy. But the annotating and search process
will come together to bridge the semantic gap. Manual quality control
and the use of metadata standards will be important. The move is
inevitable - from "stand alone" catalogues to a common information
platform functioning in many networks and the role of the librarian/
cataloguer will also evolve . However, I would suggest that in this
brave new world the role and function of the librarian is the same as
it has always been - the organisation of knowledge in whatever its
format.
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Is there such a thing as neutral cataloguing ? by Alexander
Hecht, ORF
Alexander Hecht maintained that there was no such thing as
neutral cataloguing in real life. Referring to the
"Birth of Television" project - where various Archives
collaborated to putting together clips of early Television for a
website, he said that the gathering of metadata would have been easy
if the cataloguing had been neutral but in fact various languages
Dutch, German, French and English had been used in the legacy
collections. The decision was to use English for this project but
that raised the question of who was going to translate the other
legacy collections and approve it. There is the additional
complication where non standard abbreviations and shotlisting terms
have been applied.
Further the language of the cataloguing needs to relate to the
audience for which it is intended and this can be the general public,
broadcasters and/or academics.
Theme 5 - How do we train and prepare the
archivist/media manager for their expanding role ?
Report by Catherine Tonge
Introduction. Metadata big bang : new roles in a new universe, by
Jacqui Gupta, BBC
At the moment everyone is asking the same questions about where we
are in the new digital space. There are lots of new terms and use of
the phrase "anytime, anywhere, anyhow". But change is coming about
through evolution, not revolution.
Jacqui began by looking back at the conclusions of this conference
in Amsterdam in 2004 and what new roles are needed. We identified
Media Manager, Ambassador of New Technology, Media Editor, Content
Specialist and Trainer.
So where are we now after three years of morphing and evolving?
Some of us are further down the road than others and this is very
much a transition period. We are still on the launch pad in terms of
knowledge and still got a lot to learn in this unknown digital space.
It is a very high learning curve in terms of skill sets; we need new
communication skills, data modelling, process mapping and so on.
Computer Assisted Indexing has highlighted many issues and we need
to share experiences with this developing technology which is not
quite there yet. With the Open Archive trial they have needed to
learn about their audiences; who are they? How do they catalogue for
them?
We now have Media Managers and these are acquiring a greater range
of skills. We are the Ambassadors and it is a tough role, spreading
the message and getting colleagues on board. The cataloguing role is
changing and needs to be happening in production areas and on
location. B&G have Media Editors. The BBC has some Content
Specialists - in preservation and so on. On the technical side we
have ingest operators and project managers but the librarians and
archivists are not being asked to take on that role at the
moment..
There are very few professional courses and generally people learn
on the job. In the BBC this is happening with the media managers
learning new skills in post production, editing and for the role out
of tapeless cameras and we are taking new processes on board. Sharing
and networking are absolutely key to the success of this and we need
exchanges or attachments to promote training in addition to
traditional training methods. The role of Fiat and other such
organisations is vital. We all need to keep up with changes.
For the future, we all need to adapt and be flexible. We also need
to market ourselves. Colleagues need to understand what is happening
and we need to embrace new skillsets. And we mustn't forget that we
still have a legacy archive to manage and that our colleagues and
audiences also need to develop new skillsets. She referred to the
concept of "360 Degree Competence" which was expressed by Theo
Mausli from RTSI and endorsed this as the new future for archivists
and documentalists. We will need to embrace new ways of working and
new skills across a variety of new jobs.
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Cataloguing tomorrow, cataloguing yesterday and today : an
overview from an archivist perspective, by Berit Greider, SVT
Berit Greider is archivist for SVT. She began by saying that, as
an archivist, it was very interesting to hear from all the
visionaries here, pointing out that she has to deal daily with their
visions! Berit believes it is a question of untying the knot and we
have started the process of changing the way we do this without
lowering standards. There are many challenges; users want different
things, IT engineers want us to adapt to their systems, management
often has a different view altogether and so on.
AT SVT there is lots of digital material but no adequate metadata
template. They are currently running the old and new systems
simultaneously and are caught in the middle of the change
process.
The situation in September 2001 was that material was catalogued
after broadcast. News and sport began to be filebased. It was found
that the old ways didn't work. Also the transfer between systems
didn't always work and this led to a lot of work for the
archivists.
Now all programmes are produced digitally. Cataloguing will
eventually be done pre-broadcast. It looks at this stage like the
archivists won't be doing cataloguing but teaching production how to
do it. It is difficult for production to find the time and they lack
the archiving knowledge so it remains how to see see how that works.
Berit is rather sceptical.
The idea of the new ways of working is to save money for
programmes but nobody yet knows if the new workflow WILL save money
so that's another issue.
The plan at SVT is to transfer all existing material onto the new
system so there will be only one production system (called META). The
archivists have worked closely with the team of developers and they
still need to have all the metadata right and make archiving
decisions.
SVT are working on new ways to simplify picture descriptions. For
the archive, Rights is the issue causing most distress. The best way
to capture this information is for the Producer to add it while it is
there. External producers (Independent Companies) are a problem as
they don't have access to the system. At the moment the archivist has
to spend a lot of time chasing rights information. The system uses a
traffic lights system to identify rights. It is important that
production understand the difference between transmission rights and
other rights and that they identify bought-in material in their
programmes. It is a difficult time and the archivists twist inside
out trying to help users.
In 2005 they started to reflect on how best to respond to the
changes. We found that more frequent contact with production led to
better communication and co-operation and made everything run more
smoothly.
They are still cataloguing after transmission until the metadata
template is ready and it is more important that the rights
information is included with the other cataloguing now.
Berit questioned what happens if production are entering the
cataloguing and admitted that it is not yet known who will be doing
it in the new workflow but it might not be the archivists. It is a
long time before everything will be working as planned and, for the
time being, the company still needs the experience and knowledge but
the big question for Berit is what happens to the archivists in the
future
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Enter the Media Manager, by Guy Strickland & Liz Lewis &
Helen Pritchard, BBC
Liz Lewis is a media manager in 1Xtra which is the BBC's
Urban Music radio station. Liz said that in the BBC the role of Media
Manager is evolving. There is no definitive job description and no
outline of how to achieve objectives. This is sometimes daunting as
there is no precedent for much of the work. Sometimes there isn't
even an archiving policy. Consequently the media manager needs to
adapt and be flexible and the support of the rest of the media
manager team is crucial. If somebody has a problem, another member of
the team can often supply the answer - and even if they can't, it is
useful to be able to discuss it with others.
Although it is important to develop new skills, traditional
library skills are actually now more important than ever. Production
will be doing much of the cataloguing and so Media Managers are
moving into a training role. The media managers' information skills
are used to set up guidelines in developing new systems.
Communication skills become even more important as much of the job
involves influencing and negotiating. Production aren't interested in
filling in metadata so it is necessary to persuade them and sell the
benefits. Visibility is important and it is vital that people know
who the media manager is and why he or she is there. Liz needs to
tell them clearly what she wants them to do and what's in it for
them. It is a huge culture change which takes time and it is
impossible to measure how successful this is in the short term. Liz
stressed the importance of having a champion in the area you are
working in as production will usually be more willing to listen to a
member of their own team. Another aspect is setting boundaries. Media
Managers need to be assertive and make it very clear what they WON'T
do. For example, you are not there to solve their computer problems!
Media Managers act as a bridge between Production and Information
& Archives and a bridge between archive expectations and
practicalities. It is important to sit in production areas as it is
difficult to get people to attend formal meetings and it is often
easier to catch them at their desks. It is also useful to see how
busy (or not) they are as there are usually periods of downtime when
it is easier to get them to discuss archiving issues. The BBC runs a
course called "Production Awareness" which is specifically for
non-production people to help them understand the process and
constraints.
Helen Pritchard is based in the Factual & Learning
department of BBC Production. The media manager role works alongside
production and this is important as they are more difficult to
ignore. It also offers an element of continuity. It is vital to be
visible and Media Managers have to invite themselves to meetings and
spend time building contacts. It is worth trying anything to get
their attention - Helen says that in Factual & Learning, bribery
with chocolate has worked very well!
Helen says that the attitude is starting to change. In the early
days there was a lot of cajoling and it wasn't always successful.
However, productions are now beginning to come to the media manager
for advice on metadata and archiving issues, for example asking for
help with the logging process and they are seeing for themselves the
benefit of naming conventions, so they are getting there slowly.
Helen has also been building up a knowledge base of issues
production have with the current systems and has found it interesting
to make contacts across the wider BBC in areas such as Technology,
Broadcast (Red Bee Media) and the BBC's new on-demand system, iPlayer
which is currently in development. This gives her an overview unique
in the BBC and this has proved invaluable. Production are only
interested in their own area and it is all about building confidence
and trust. It is a very hands-on role. But it is also about building
self-confidence and learning new skills. Helen came to the job with
library skills and these are very important but more and more is
expected. She was recently approached to evaluate digital logging
systems but from a metadata point of view but also examining the
digital production process and how the Media Manager role fits in. So
she has had to learn a lot in a short space of time. New systems for
example. She had Final Cut Pro editing training, has been to
Broadcasting conferences, had discussions with Sony and other
suppliers, been looking at ingest processes, codex, High Definition
TV, IPTV, and so on. A broader range of knowledge and expertise is
required of media managers. It is a steep learning curve and very
challenging but, basically, it comes down to old-fashioned research.
Media Managers look at what's going on and what will be going on in
the future and identify what we need to learn to be ready to
react.
www.archiveforum.tv, by Gerhard Stanz, ORF
Gerhard gave an introduction to the new FIAT
Forum - and gave a
short demo.
Please register and join in the discussions. The MMC welcomes
feedback on the Vienna Seminar and suggestions on topics for the next
MMC seminar .
Overview and conclusions
Report by Nicola Jenkinson
The seminar provided a valuable opportunity for Archivists,
Cataloguers (called Documentalists across Europe) and Media Managers
to discuss topical issues and share experiences, at a time when
technology is transforming our roles.
There were representatives present from the following
organisations:
- AP - the Associated Press
- BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation
- Beeld & Geluid - the Dutch broadcasting archive
- BFI - the British Film Institute
- ORF - our hosts, and the Austrian public service
broadcaster
- RAI - the Italian broadcaster
- RTE - Ireland's public service broadcaster
- RTSI - the Swiss broadcaster for the Italian speaking part of
Switzerland
- SVT - the Swedish public service broadcaster
As a conclusion, I want to pick out the main themes that cropped
up across the seminar.
The digital library and the impact of technology
A lot of broadcasters across Europe have, or are well on the way
to having, a totally digital archive. The main drivers for this
include: being able to provide 24 hour research at users' desktops;
greater efficiencies in terms of retrieval times and storage costs;
being able to reduce manual, labour intensive tasks; being able to
capture more output; and increasing the re-use of archive material to
both production & the public.
The placement & organisation of libraries has changed as a
result of this and provide a good indication of how our library could
change in Salford. Programmes are delivered to a central library area
in a digital format rather than on tape. The libraries are located in
the heart of production areas and seen as fundamental parts of the
production process. There appears to be greater collaboration between
the libraries and production areas especially with regards to
production providing more and more metadata at the programme creation
stage. However, a major theme was the problem of collecting good
quality metadata from production and also that the best technology
available will always need manual and specialist intervention to be
effective. Georgio's Presto Space project presentation and the Dutch
Archives (B&G) are good one's to read on this theme.
Managing media on servers also means that archive decisions need
to be taken earlier as producers assign value to rushes material as
they edit it. There also appears to be a greater tendency across
Europe to treat television, radio & online in the same way - in
the digital world format is no longer an issue.
The introduction of new technology allowed the broadcasters and
the libraries to re-evaluate their relationships and the library's
placement in the organisation. A key theme across the seminar was the
importance of making the technology work with the business processes
in place and not vice versa. Therefore analysing workflows plays a
big part in digitising broadcasters. A good example of this was with
RTE who carried out a project to improve their post-production
facilities. A project group was set up including key representatives
from all parts of the organisation and charged with mapping the
entire post-production process to analyse where improvements could be
made and where metadata needed to be added to assets.
A more close- to- home example was illustrated by BBC Scotland.
Their first slide showing the size and scale of the new Pacific Quay
building made everyone let out an audible gasp, and Joanne Evan's
presentation was able to show how new premises, new technology and
new ways of working have come together in Glasgow. Scotland are
using technology pioneered by Swedish TV (Avid, IBM and Ardendo
software) so again experiences could be shared. These will all come
into play when we start deciding what will be needed for Salford and
Media City.
Cataloguing
There were a number of presentations focussing on cataloguing in
the digital age. There is a move away from traditional cataloguing
i.e. non-interactive, labour intensive, standalone systems with
structured classification schemes towards interactive, interoperable
systems with far less control and structure.
One trend is the growth of automated cataloguing methods.
PrestoSpace is a project aiming to provide a standardised technical
solution allowing the preservation of digital av content. They are
experimenting with new technologies including automatic speech
recognition and visual aids such as identifying keyframe changes. The
technology is improving but there were still a number of problems
highlighted such as the impact of music over voices, the use of slang
and regional accents which the system can't pick up, and the
inability of computers to add context to the cataloguing.
Another trend is the growth of user-generated metadata and social
tagging which has taken control of cataloguing away from the
archives. YouTube, Facebook etc allow the public to index information
themselves which reduces the structure of established classification
schemes. Production is also expected to add basic metadata at the
point of creation which then follows the asset throughout its life
and reduces the cataloguer's workload. Cataloguing needs to become
more user-driven as users become more adept at researching and
retrieving material themselves.
Annemieke de Jong (Beeld & Geluid) and Eva-Lis Green (Swedish
TV) set out a couple of thought-provoking and challenging debates
around what was actually within the archivists' control. They both
concluded that we may have to compromises on some of our past
standards in order to encompass the whole breadth of content produced
in a digital world.
Cataloguers at the seminar rounded up with a number of
conclusions. They envisage cataloguers becoming more involved in
creating standards and guidelines, enriching basic metadata with
greater context and meaning, tailoring indexing to specific needs
where necessary (e.g. a producer needs different information a
university lecturer) and also moving closer to production.
Changing Roles
All of the presentations touched on how these changes are changing
the traditional archivist's role. Our own Media Manager's
presentation by the London team focussed on this issue specifically
by concentrating on the skills and training needs this new world
requires. A lot of the conclusions reached link in with the work of
the BBC skillsets group that I attended so it was good to see that
there is consensus across Europe! There is a massive learning curve
ahead and a lot of the training can only be done on the job.
Library skills remain vital but a lot of new skills were
highlighted including: server management; data management; project
management skills; technical skills and understanding; workflow
knowledge and the crucial importance of being able to communicate
clearly, negotiate and be assertive where necessary. There was
agreement that roles are becoming more about quality checking,
training, policy making and enhancing and moving away from the more
hands-on manual tasks.
Theo Mausli from RTSI (Swiss TV) gave a good round-up of what he
termed the archivists "360 degree competencies" which place us all at
the heart of the digital organisation with the digital library
underpinning all broadcasting activities.
Challenges
It was reassuring to note that a lot of the challenges were common
ones across libraries and that everyone is facing similar issues.
Included were :
- Resistance from production and cataloguers to change;
- Incomplete metadata from production with lack of rights data
being a specific concern;
- Communication issues with IT with regards new technologies
e.g. lack of understanding of jargon;
- ommunication issues in general, with a real need to make sure
that programme-makers, project leaders, librarians, IT and
technologists are all describing and understanding the same things
- and are on the same wavelength.
- Preservation concerns re future-proofing the digital
archive;
- A tendency for production's needs to take precedence over the
library's;
- New technology presents new problems as we become totally
dependant on it - it's far easier to lose a digital file than a
tape and solutions to problems are often our of our hands and in
the hands of IT;
- Online is still seen as a challenge by most libraries due to
its relative newness and rapidity of advancement.
Oh yes, and we learnt that tapeless was an "out" as a term, and
"file-based" was "in".
These questions will hopefully be answered at the next seminar but
will probably be replaced by many more!
BBC Media Managers
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