Report on the Prague workshop, May 25-27 2011 by Erwin Verbruggen

While Prague was hosting the annual ELAG conference, where librarians gather to talk about linking and upgrading existing data models (“MARC must die!” was among the most popular tweets during the event), the Bohemian city was host to a parallel metadata gathering of film archivists. In the cosy screening room Ponrepo of the Czech National Film Archive, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN)’s standard models for film EN 15907 and its sibling EN 15744 were presented to an international gathering.

The audience consisted of a mix of institutions that care for audio-visual heritage ranging from television, media art and video to film historical collections. Some of them had already been experimenting with the standard in their daily operations (such as EYE Film Institute Netherlands and the British Film Institute). Others were undecided yet as to what model to use or had previously made that decision for themselves.

The model itself can be seen as a variant on the FRBR model, though with a few important differences. It is built up by a top level (the Cinematographic Work), a Variant level for the different versions, a Manifestation level, which separates the different media types and an Item level to describe the particular technicalities. All these different levels have in their turn Agents who influence, instigate or collaborate on them and Events that make them happen.

The group dynamic of the workshop resulted in lively discussions which caused the model’s developer, Detlev Balzer, to invite each and all to point out their needs and clarifications by collaborating on the project’s film standards wiki. The content of the workshop and a great deal of background information can be found on this wiki space.

A separate topic for debate was brought in by Murnau Stiftung’s restorer Anke Wilkeninck’s talk about the film elements of Fritz Lang’s Spione. She rebutted the assumption that when talking about the variants of a film, we need to look for a single Original. As silent pictures could come out in different colour or local versions with drastic differences in both montage and narrative, restorers can find themselves looking at several equivalent versions of a film that has no singular origin. The EN 15907 model is interoperable and thus capable of clarifying the multiplicity of such versions and, linking the different nodes that add up a film production to information bases within or amongst institutions and on the web.

In order to obtain the full reach of this standard’s goals, it wi’ll be key for some pioneering institutions to share their interpretations of the model. One example of how it can be used in a real life database is to be found at the Flemish toolbox for cultural heritage institutions, CEST, which wrote a guideline for its implementation (in Dutch) in the AdLib software. A second example will be highlighted in Paris, during the fourth workshop in this series (June 22-24,) where the BFI will perform a special session about their vision on and upcoming implementation of the standard. The next step is now for standardization bodies (such as the FIAF Cataloguing and Documentation Commission) to define some ground rules for cataloguing and for all interested parties to further evaluate and collaborate on the model.

More information: www.filmstandards.org

Announcement by Middlesex University

One day conference
Thursday 22 September, Hendon campus.

On 22 September 2011 Middlesex University will host a European and comparative media law conference. This one-day event intends to highlight the risks attached to a profit-oriented broadcasting law and policy, both at EU and at national level, and to identify ways to refocus broadcasting regulation on its original public interest aspirations.

Speakers include Professor Nico van Eijk (The Netherlands); Professor Tom Gibbons (UK); Dr. Anna Herold (Belgium); Professor Bernd Holznagel (Germany); Dr. Irini Katsirea (UK); Professor Ian Walden (UK); Professor Vincenzo Zeno-Zencovich (Italy).

Please see http://www.mdx.ac.uk/broadcasting for full details, booking and programme.

Press release by PrestoCentre

From 12-16 September in Paris and Bry-sur-Marne, France, PrestoCentre organises as part of its Professional Development Training Series a course in “Long-Term Audiovisual Digital Preservation: Strategy, Planning & Tools”. Participants in the course include large audiovisual archives, service providers and technology providers.

Training Course Summary
The audiovisual (AV) record of the 20th century is at risk, with digitisation being a solution, but this created a new problem: the preservation of digital AV content. Managers and technical staff of the AV industry need to be knowledgeable of, and understand how to use, the latest digital preservation technologies, in order to procure the safety of these documents of cultural heritage. Based on the experiences of some of the largest audiovisual and broadcast archives in Europe, this training will give a complete account of the tools and technologies available for the digital preservation of, and access to, audiovisual content, outlining strategies, workflows and architecture planning. In addition, the training provides a range of informative visits to a variety of relevant sites.

Course Topics
Strategy; preservation planning; OAIS; workflow; architecture; mass storage; formats; encoding; compression; metadata; preservation metadata; quality control; service management; risk management; rights management; partnerships; state of the art; support mechanisms; future developments.

More Information and Registration
Visit http://training2011.prestocentre.eu for programme, background and more information. Registration is limited to 40 delegates, so click here to register now.

About PrestoCentre
PrestoCentre brings together a community of stakeholders in audiovisual digitisation and digital preservation to share, work and learn. PrestoCentre helps custodians and creators of audiovisual content make the most of their digital archives through advocacy, information creation, knowledge leveraging, and valuable practical workshops. Using free tools and simple strategies PrestoCentre saves you money and time whilst improving long-term access to your digital audiovisual collections. PrestoCentre does this by helping you share your experiences and learn from best practices.

Save the date for the Second EUscreen International Conference in Stockholm on 15 and 16 September 2011. The conference program is still under construction, but there will be one day with plenary presentations and one day with two workshops. More information about the conference can be found on this website in the next few months.

By Aleksander Lavrencic and Katja Sturm

Date: 6-8 April
Place: Radenci

The conference “Technical and Field related Problems of Classical and Electronic Archiving: Supplementary Education in the Fields of Archiving, Documenting and Informatics” was held this year in Radenci, Slovenija.  The main themes of the conference were scientific study of archiviology, additional education and professional training of archivists, archival buildings, protection, access and use of archival holdings. The conference was attended by an international public: besides Slovenia there were also professionals from Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia.

Various lecturers of Slovene and foreign lecturers from the fields of archival theory and practice, preservation, electronic archiving and long-term preservation were invited to speak about technical and field related problems of classical and electronic archiving. These problems included access and use of archives, archival buildings, electronic archiving and long-term preservation. Questions like how to deal with the protection of common cultural heritage – efforts of archives, museums and libraries, archival science between theory, legal provisions and their implementation and improving the quality of managing archival activities were addressed during the lectures.

Katja Šturm held a presentation about EUscreen during the third day of the conference. This day was dedicated to digitisation of content and the presentation on the internet, how to run international projects and to promote archival activities and models of cooperation between archives. Other presentations in the session focused on using Slovenian film archives in theory and practise between 1968 and 2010 and alternative options of using archives – therapy for elderly people (inspired by “Storytables” and dr. John Ellis lecture in EUscreen conference in Rome).

Press release

EUscreen has released its webcast portal, http://webcast.euscreen.eu, with presentations from events organised by EUscreen that were publicly accessible. Up to this point, the portal contains presentations from the Open Workshop on Metadata Schemes and Content Selection Policies and presentations from the First EUscreen International Conference. Some highlights of the portal:

• Examples on metadata from projects and initiatives like the Europeana Data Model Group, the European Film Gateway, the EBU and the W3C Media Annotation Working Group.
• Automatic metadata extraction of video and images and its applications.
• Doing cultural research with television material: constructing cultural memories, building platforms for historians and making sense of digital heritage.
• Case studies on creative reuse.

Future, public events organised by EUscreen will also be streamed on this platform.

By Eve-Marie Oesterlen

The British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) was proud to present a sneak preview of the EUscreen portal as part of its Learning on Screen conference held at the National Film Theatre (BFI Southbank), London, on 24th March 2011. In his showcase presentation, Luis Carrasqueiro outlined the benefits and challenges of providing standardised and multilingual access to the television content of 19 European archives to around 50 delegates from British universities and media institutions.

The demonstration of the beta version of the EUscreen portal and its content focused on ways in which to make best use of this unique European multi-media resource within the context of higher education. Questions by interested participants revolved around the re-use of content, the range of the audiovisual material included in the project and whether copyright issues prevented the inclusion of up to date material. Learning on Screen is the annual conference and awards ceremony held by BUFVC on the importance and benefits of using image and sound in education.

The presentation slides can be found here.

By Kati Hyyppä, Sanna Marttila and Wietske van den Heuvel 

The License to remix! video remix workshop was organized in the context of the EUscreen project and the Remix Helsinki initiative last November in Helsinki, Finland. The workshop promoted creative, legal re-use of audiovisual media, and archival content in particular. Eleven young adults participated in the one weekend event, creating remixes with video editing programs and VJing equipment. Sanna Marttila and Kati Hyyppä, researchers from the Aalto University’s School of Art and Design, who organized the workshop in collaboration with their colleague Andrew Gryf Paterson, also interviewed the participants in order to obtain insight to emerging remix practices and challenges in legal remixing.
 
The workshop was overall a positive experience and showed that people are interested in using archival audiovisual materials creatively. However, the interviews with the participants revealed that it is not currently easy to find legal, relevant video and audio content for creative works. Licenses and terms of use are also experienced as confusing, and it is hard to determine which materials can be mixed together. The findings of the workshop thus highlight the need for an easy access to archival videos as well as clearly expressed terms of use.
 
The outcomes of the workshop were presented along with a framework of creative re-use of audiovisual content by Sanna Marttila and Kati Hyyppä during the Remix Cinema Workshop at the University of Oxford (UK) on March 24th. The presentation during the latter event, titled ‘Practices and Challenges in Re-using Archival Video Materials’, was received positively, and will be published later as an article.

The results of the first workshop were also presented during the internal IPR workshop at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NL) on March 16. During this workshop, partners from the EUscreen consortium discussed about the IPR limitations they face when providing access to audiovisual content. These limitations still causes difficulties for partners and it affects their content selection policy. One of the goals in EUscreen is to develop examples of how a less restrictive legislation like CC-licenses can create better and more meaningful access to audiovisual content. This is especially beneficial for students, teachers, researchers, media professionals and other users that need to be able to re-use audiovisual content. In order to facilitate this, EUscreen will provide access to a limited collection of CC-licensed material during the next two years of the project. The workshop also showed that all partners see the potential in offering this kind of access and that they would be happy to open up their content more, if only they could.