Digital Audio Round Table (9/11/2009)
Digital Audio Round Table
CO Alliance
September 11, 2009
9-12pm
Attendees:
Diana Sweeney and Andrew Dorfman-Regis; RobinSatterwhite-Colorado College; Aimee Brown-Mesa State College(phone); HelenReed-UNC (phone); Diana Gunnels-UNC; Betty Meagher and Greg Colati-DU; DennisMoser-Univ. of Wyoming; Nancy Hunter-CSU; Ed Fugikawa, Alex Ushakov, JessicaBranco-Colati, George Machovec, Alan Charnes, and Rose Nelson-CO Alliance
ActionItems
Survey- to determine Alliancelibraries audio formats that they may consider digitizing and also equipmentneeds/capacity. The point of the surveyis to find out if there is interest in pursuing a collaborative project toAlliance library audio collections.
JHOVE stand alone tool distributeand send to those interested
Look into grant opportunities foraudio (Grammy foundation-fund audio related to music 30-50k range on grants
Audio and Digitalcollections
Inventory of Institutional Collections
Diana-Regis
Center for War Experience .
audio interviews from veterans.
Mostly digital format but some analog.
Robin-ColoradoCollege
Oral history of northwestern Colorado women (Homesteadproject) Retired CC librarian has volunteered to digitize them at home. Tapeshave become very fragile.
Have some podcasts that have been captured on campus andtranscripts.
Music library-student performances, composition classes- Varietyof formats mp3 , old tapes, etc.
Helen-UNC collections
Oral history in archival services some were digitized. Some in analog format.
Several music performance recordings. Some will be video.
Copyright is a concern: need right of work being performedand also of the original creator of the performance
Aimee-Mesa StateCollege
A little bit of audio and old video and film. Would like to put this into the ADR.
She is also planning to capture audio from a Public Historyclass next semester (spring 10')with plans to put this in the ADR as well
Dennis-Wyoming
Photo journalism project-includes images, gps coordinates,and audio files in digital format.
Interviews of early instructors in the education studiesprogram. These are in digital format andincludes both audio and transcript files.
Also have tapes in special collections-working on digitizingthem now.
Betty-DU
Beck Jewish History-only small part have metadata andtranscripts, lots of oral histories. Have digitized about 350.
Music library has audio tapes-There are some copyrightissues with this as well
There is a move from video files to audio files. This creates some challenges in dealing withthe older formats.
Nancy Hunter-CSU
Programs that lend themselves to audio conversion: performingarts, merchandising and fashion programs.
Students have become more interested in video.
The library, as a repository, will likely be called on totake care of this program content
CSU doesn't have a large quantity of audio material thatneeds to be converted to digital format. Most of it has been converted.
Holley-CU Boulder
1500 files of folk music collection digitized.
Archive from big band era. Copyright is always an issue.
Andy-Regis
Smattering of other things audio, video, podcasts, giftcollection hundreds of thousands of radio programs supposedly these are alreadydigitized. Not sure if they will handover copyright.
Will need to digitize a new collection called Kaleidoscope-Americanacollection.
Jessicasummarized main points of discussion:
Rights and usage, guidelines about creation, conversion,sound model collections at many institutions. Transcriptions-are very laborious to work with requires a lot of manualeffort in transcribing.
Copyright is a large concern for all institutions.
What resources haveyou looked at in determining rights?
CU Boulder used legal notification to contact descendants ofthe performers from the Folk Collection. Sound Model recommended doing this to cover copyrightissues.
CC-Some people interviewed signed release forms. Release was before the age of the web. Trying to go back on oral histories andcontact descendants.
Who's responsible forcopyright?
Depends on project- at DU the Archive department wasresponsible for copyright.
Getting release forms upfront so they don't have to go backretrospectively and get them from descendants. It's much more difficult to get them after the fact.
Holley mentioned that Naropa has a great release form onavailable in the CDP.
There was also a question about who you need to get releaseforms from. There seemed to be consensusthat as long as there was a disclaimer of "this is being recorded" at thebeginning of a lecture or program, this should cover any copyrightobligations. This seems to be the commonpractice in recording lectures.
Intellectual property is another issue-what does universityown versus what do faculty own?
Best Practices
Most institutions are using CDP's Audio best practices.
Some institutions do the routine day-to-day projectsin-house and outsource large projects
DU-has outsourced to an in-house department that has theequipment and staff to support digitization.
CC-has created their own best practices. They would be interested in outsourcing audioconversion projects, as only one person works on this, so there are somestaffing concerns.
Wyoming-have some born digital projects such as the Photojournalism project. All projects aredone in-house in Dennis' office. Alsousing CDP best practices.
Holley-CU mentioned that within the CDP best practices thereare different levels of standards-minimum, recommended and optimal. Libraries must decide when to use the variouslevels. The type of level will bedictated by the project. For example, ifspace is a concern, a library may want to choose the recommended level over theoptimum level. It also depends on the typeof collection whether you use recommended or optimal. For example, voice may require a lower level,while music may require the optimal standard. Master s may be higher quality were the view files are a lowerresolution so require a lesser standard.
Wyoming is basing their storage planning for digital fileson an optimum level.
Regis-Have digitized for access rather than archivalpurposes. Don't have capacity togenerate the metadata for archival purposes this is in reference to just theiraudio and video files.
Metadata
Nancy mentioned that getting technical metadata was aproblem for CSU -. The repositorysoftware will do an extract of metadata for access files, but not for masterfiles. This is a problem because it leads to inaccuracies. For example, the date of digitization becomes the date thatthe item was created. Masters are toobig for their software to handle. Only ingesting jp2 images. CSU doesn't have a streaming server server sothey aren't able to provide access from the repository to entire oralhistories.
Jhov, which standsfor JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment, was created by JSTOR andHarvard University. Jhove is a type of softwarethat both CSU and CU(stand aloneclient of Jhove) use to extract embedded metadata from a digital object. It capturesthings like playing time and date of creation.
Alex pointed out that some older files don't have thisembedded metadata. However, Jessicamentioned that anything that has been CDP converted does have this embeddedmetadata.
Holley mentioned that MIX can be extracted from the JHOVErecord by using XXLT.
Do you letcontributors generate their own metadata are there standards or guidelines?
Greg explained that the DU-School of social work generatesmetadata and then the library converts and maps it over. In other situations the library creates themetadata. Sometimes it's easier just tohave the catalogers do it. Quality controlis always a concern. Diana mentionedthat it may be difficult to create metadata when you have a large number offiles. In these cases, it may be betterto have user generated metadata.
Collaboration betweenAlliance libraries on digital conversion
Areas in which libraries could collaborate: Equipment,skills, staff
Access to the college's equipment is a concern for somecampuses. The equipment is notowned/shared with the library.
CSU has combed computing services with library services sothere is an opportunity for collaboration between units.
Jessica raised the question about training 3-4 people at theAlliance who could work on digitizing collections across the alliance.
Someone else mentioned taking CDPs approach of placingimaging (audio visual) centers in various locations.
There may be grant funding available for these types ofendeavors I fthey were Colorado specific collections.
Diana raised the idea of doing a pilot project. This may provide a model for future digitalprojects. Also, if the Alliance did apilot project it may serve as a model for applying for grant funds for a futureendeavor.
Audio File conversion
Alex mentioned that it wasn't difficult, time consuming orexpensive to convert audio files. Mostinstitutions have audio in vinyl, reel and audio tape-A single person could dothis process. Sound editing can be doneon a regular PC. One tape reader is enough.
What kind of media do you have? -is a good question for thesurvey, Alex explained.
Survey ofinstitutions analog files and equipment/Audio Project among Alliance libraries
Jessica mentioned that she would put together a survey aboutwhat types of analog equipment and formats institutions have to find out ifthere is a strong need and desire to implement an audio conversion projectamong Alliance libraries. This would be a good way to leverage theconsortia to do a group purchase through BCR and Air Show. The survey would provide a quick analysis ofsome of the older formats that institutions have.
George commented that Airshow services may be great for convertingobscure formats that you only have one or two of. Nancy mentioned that leasing equipment for apilot project may make more sense than purchasing it.
A question was raised about transcribing audio and thechallenges with this. Sound Model didthis, but the correction process is very time consuming.
Greg mentioned that voice transcribing software is still notoptimal for this type of conversion process.
Access Expectations:
Jessica asked if selling is a concern in digitizing andmaking available audio collections. Forexample, perhaps an organization such as NPR or individual like Ken Burns wouldlike to purchase a particular audio file or performance. How would an institution handle this? Some participants mentioned that selling isreally only a concern if someone wants to purchase a master file, becauseaccess level copies are going to be MP3s. It's more likely that cost recoveryis an issue in distributing content.
Another issue is that institution may not own all the rightsto certain performances.
Greg mentioned the hope of being able to stream out theaudio and allow people to listen to just a segment of the entire file. Thesesegments or markers are called clippoints.
A point was raised about other projects that are assigningmetadata to media projects. Thefollowing projects/locations have implemented media projects and have appliedmetadata.
Indiana, Ohio, DU, Stanford (open source) UC Santa Barbara-Psychology dept. Texas Legacy Project-conservation historyassoc.
Dennis mentioned theTexas Legacy project at http://texaslegacy.org/ This project uses clip points that allowsyou to bookmark your files. For example,you can find a place within an audio interview on this project and bookmarkthat specific segment.
Wyoming is attempting to use clip points in theiraudio/digital project.
Jessica mentioned that the ADR could look at these variousprojects to find out what types of viewers the ADR might consider adopting.
It's important to prevent downloading in some cases if thereare copyright restrictions on saving files. A streaming server will prevent downloads.
ADR staff is currently experimenting with FFmpeg-streamingaudio software. Fez uses this. You can'tdownload and save a file, but it does put it into a temp file available incache.
Holley mentioned that authentication/authorization is also apertinent issue in terms of access to audio. Some content requires authentication depending on digital rights. The ADR will need to know this to be sure toapply the correct authentication for various types of content from differentinstitutions.
Meeting Adjourned.