Open Source Broadcasting

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Putting PBCore to the test

OK so I just spent a little time with PBCore, seeing if the shoe fits so to speak. This is the metadata standard likely to be pushed by CPB and others who have spent a lot of time on it. At first glance, it might work.

But you be the judge. To facilitate, I created a nice little Access database called PBCoreTest. You can access this database in my Netfiles Opensourcebroadcasting folder. You should be able to click to download it.

If you do that, you'll find a bunch of tables, and one form. The form is for inputting your metadata into the master PBCore table. All the other tables are basically lookup tables for fields in the master table. You will quickly note that there's a bunch of crap in there you will never use, in the lookup tables, and even in the fields of the master PBCore table. The point of this exercise is you get to change 'em to suit your purpose. Delete what you don't need or will never use. Look and you'll see what I mean.

You could alter this table to fit your own content/metadata scenario, chop down the verbiage in the lookup tables, delete some of the fields entirely, and then save that into a form you can use to input your own stuff.

Best to not delete those fields PBCore says are manditory. But hey, I'm not the PBCore police.

But Jack, I hear someone shout, why are you so lame as to do this using Microsoft Access? Doesn't that violate our opensource principles? Actually yes it does, but this is just a quick little experiment and I happen to kind of know Access sorta well. If someone wants to build this using whatever, that'd be even better. Also, I didn't really do this the way it should be done for real, but the purpose is to get a feel for PBCore and how it fits with your content.

If you have any problems accessing the access, questions, or etc, just let me know.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

UK's Digital Aquifer

Here we have a cooperative project among several British agencies to develop a usable content-sharing framework for "Memory Institutions," e.g. universities, museums, the BBC, and other sources of public information. It's called the Common Information Environment, or perhaps the metaphorical name Digital Aquifer, and you can peruse the details here.

The CIE is not a new search engine or portal to all knowledge, says CIE director Paul Miller: "Rather, it is collaborative work towards a culture in which existing and future organizations presume the need to be joined up to be part of the digital aquifer of national interest information from the outset, and work for that, rather than continuing the trend of building multitudinous silos of data, each fronted by a different Web interface, and each ignorant of related data in neighboring silos." (Ariadne Apr 2004) ShelfLife, No. 159 (June 3 2004) http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue39/miller/

Seems like a good idea to me.

The journal this appears in is also worth exploring/bookmarking. Check out Ariadne, published quarterly by the Council for Museums, Archives, and Libraries in the UK...and maybe tell me how to pronounce it.