Blog

The Ages of Digital
Claire Harvey
March 14, 2012
As we all know, the digital landscape is evolving and developing. Over the past 18 months, companies have extended and matured their digital operations. Across this changing landscape is the adoption of a spectrum of digital opportunities within the video community. Not many companies are operating using all of these levels, but there are a significant number, and they are growing across industry sectors. What follows is a description of how companies in the AV domain are existing at different stages of digital ages. Pre-Digital There are not many totally pre-digital companies anymore.... read more
Wash Day for Your Data
Matthew Addis
February 28, 2012
How often do you scrub your data? Scrubbing means checking that the data you are storing is in good condition and fixing any problems you find. Just like my kids, data doesn't seem to stay clean for very long. Data needs regular cleaning too, to make it all clean and shiny again. Scrubbing is wash day for data! As I've blogged before, no storage technology is perfect, there is always something that can go wrong. And if it can go wrong, then it will go wrong. Bit rot, media failures, software bugs, human errors - they all cause data corruption or loss if left... read more
Making Money from AV Archive Content
Claire Harvey
December 8, 2011
The business of making money from AV archive content is entering a new era. The traditional models of selling to production, education and the heritage sectors is opening up as the content industries and the media industries converge in a new digital ecosystem.Evolving models from the web, print and broadcast are offering new opportunities to AV archive owners and managers. With a digital infrastructure, companies are able to explore new business models. Within this burgeoning realm, what are the fundamentals of a good product, finding an audience, and making money from it? What kinds of... read more
What's it worf?
Matthew Addis
November 24, 2011
WORF. Write Once Read Forever. That's the term used by Princeton University when talking about their data storage and access service. For a single up-front fee they will keep data safe forever and make it available when anyone needs to use it. I mentioned the idea of a 'forever cost' of storage in my last post Tales from the Attic. It's an attractive idea - pay once, store forever. A single endowment given to your data that will secure it an everlasting home. But can this really work? As Woody Allen said: "forever is a long time, especially towards the end". Forever in a Klein... read more
Finding New Approaches to Metadata
Claire Harvey
September 7, 2011
There is much discussion about the value of metadata, but when it comes down to it, many companies that deal in AV content, whether as producers or broadcasters or archives, find it difficult to justify the cost of creating it. The theoretical benefits of creating metadata are easy to understand: it helps us to find, view and publish our content. However, many AV custodians don’t see the value coming back, either through process efficiencies or income. Creating metadata is buying the train pass that can get you to work. Without it, there is little chance of your content earning money. But... read more
Tales From the Attic
Matthew Addis
August 16, 2011
After rummaging in my attic I resurrected my old Garrard record deck, much to the bemusement of my kids. They thought it crazy that to play music I had to cue up a big black disc of plastic and drop a needle on the top! I thought it was fantastic - especially the Pink Floyd records I hadn't played for years. It worked first time. It sounded great. I didn't mind the odd pop and crackle. A testament to how 'analogue' media and simple engineering can stand the test of time.I then started to wonder what my children would be bringing down from their attics when they are my age. This reminded... read more
The New Age of Rights
Claire Harvey
June 29, 2011
The eG8 Forum in Paris (24-25 May 2011) pulled in the glitterati of the Internet World. Eric Schmidt, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Lessig, amongst others, debated the future of our networked society and passed on their observations to the ensuing G8 meeting. Quite a coup.The internet is threatening the hegemony of global governments. Twitter has fanned the flames of revolution in the Middle East, and has brought privacy laws in the UK to their knees. Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Spotify (and there are many more) are game changers, significantly reshaping how we live and work.How should the... read more
AV Archives and “FlickTwitFaceTube” (Part II)
PrestoCentre Ed...
June 15, 2011
PrestoCentre is at work on a more detailed examination of the options for, and practices of, libraries, museums, and archives that are using commercial services such a Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and non-commercial services such as Europeana, Wikimedia, and the Internet Archive to promote their collections.Initially, we’re looking at the practices of large archives with large commercial services, getting insights from the PrestoPRIME project which is looking at this issue more deeply. Over time, we’ll be developing case studies and best practice guidelines, so if you have been... read more
AV Archives and “FlickTwitFaceTube”
PrestoCentre Ed...
June 1, 2011
‘We have come to the point where the identity and independence of moving image and recorded sound archives is confronted by the imperatives of the commercial world. In principle, everyone agrees that national collecting institutions should be independent from commercial imperatives. In practice, the commercial world is already within our gates, and it has been within our gates for quite some time. This is no longer a matter of whether or not we want to deal with it; it is a matter of how we can we deal with it without betraying our cultural mission’. - Paolo Cherchi Usai (Quoted in... read more
Finding Media in a Semantic World
Claire Harvey
May 25, 2011
There are some interesting rumblings in the shadowy world of taxonomies and ontologies. It’s possible, that this critical piece in the searching jigsaw will be revolutionised in the incoming tide of the Semantic Web. As we know, there are a number of elements necessary for effective search. An archive’s ability to be searched depends on ‘bottom up’ information. This comes from catalogue information or metadata about the item in question. It also depends on a search engine that can effectively sift through the metadata to find the most suitable results for a given search. The jam in this... read more

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