[No Archive Is An Island]

National Library of Australia

What is the Mediapedia?

Douglas Elford, Digital Preservation

September 18th 2008

Issues

• Identification of various media types for assisting with collection planning, assessment, documentation, infrastructure and preservation

• Rapid staffing and technological changes resulting in loss of business knowledge, within an organisation or external communities, about these various media formats for making risk management evaluations or preservation decisions about access to the content

Current Options

Despite these issues most collecting organisations still need to collect content on physical media

• Specialist staff, organisations or third party services• Specific interest web sites, although potentially non on-going• Wikipedia, although one needs to know initially what one is

looking for. Its currency, accuracy, level of trust and the longevity of the data is again potentially fraught

Problem

Collecting Organisations:• It would be advantageous to be able to easily identify physical media

carriers being offered to collecting organisations without specialist knowledge

• Is it considered an obsolete media or is there an available mechanism which can provide access to its content

• Physical media can be quite fragile, especially digital media, with data loss due to a number of factors including media decay (environmental or chemical), data corruption, etc. which then informs evaluation or preservation decisions

• because it is not in a dynamic medium, you do not know until you try to access the content

Mediapedia

What Do We Need?• a curated repository for business knowledge and ‘trusted’

sources• enable the identification with a low level of audience

knowledge• ability to discover deeper knowledge within or out to external

sources• cater for both general and specialists audiences• contains additional information about dependencies (such as

hardware, connectors, interfaces, software, etc.) and access paths for usage which are not currently represented in other sources such as Wikipedia

• a web based service which can be integrated internally or externally to other services.

Mediapedia - Classification SchemaGenre

• Recording of the media genre (category)

Data, Microform, Moving Image, Sound, Still Image & Unmediated

Process• Recording of the type of process used to

record informatione.g. magnetic, magnetic/optical, mechanical, optical, photo chemical, photo mechanical, photo digital, solid state, etc.

Carriers• Recording of the type of carrier, and

optionally its enclosure.e.g. tape reel, disc, disc / disk cartridge, cylinder, paper, etc.

Name• Recording common names of the

physical media carrier.

Genre

Process

Carrier/Housing+ (Enclosure)

Name

Process– magnetic – magnetic/optical – mechanical – optical – paper – photo chemical – photo mechanical – photo digital – solid state

____________________Carriers (by Genre)- DATA -– paper card– paper tape– disc– disc cartridge– disc pack– disk cartridge– disk sleeved– flash memory card– flash memory stick– online– ROM cartridge– tape cartridge– tape cassette– tape reel

Classification

(Complete listing available at: http://www.nla.gov.au/mediapedia/)

- MICROFORM -– aperture card– microfiche– microfiche cassette– microfilm cartridge– microfilm cassette– microfilm reel– microfilm slip– microopaque

- MOVING IMAGE -– film cartridge– film cassette– filmslip– filmstrip– filmstrip cartridge– film reel– tape cartridge– tape cassette– video disc– tape reel

- SOUND -– cartridge– cassette– cylinder– disc– roll– tape reel– audio film reel

- STILL IMAGE -– cartridge– cassette– filmstrip– filmstrip cartridge– film negative– film positive/transparency– flash memory card– flash memory stick– glass negative– mounted slide– overhead transparency– paper print– plastic print– stereograph card– stereograph reel

- UNMEDIATED -– book– card– flipchart– microscope slide– paper– sheet

Mediapedia Prototype

These prototype screenshots illustrate:

• the Conservation Assessment statement to enable soft risk assessment policy during collection assessment

• some of the potential multiple relationships that can be created to enable the development and management of access paths to enable accessing content on physical media.

• for example the Environment Examples tab indicates which physical devices [NLA in this example] currently can accommodate that particular media. This is displayed via a relationship to an on-line Access, Configuration & Environment database - Configulator.

Mediapedia Prototype - Sound

Form View

Form View - Environmental Specifications

Mediapedia Prototype - Sound

Form View – Materials: Tape Variants

Mediapedia Prototype - Sound

Mediapedia Prototype - Data

Form View

Form View – Media variants

Mediapedia Prototype - Data

Form View – Access Environment Specs

Mediapedia Prototype - Data

Mediapedia – Other Views

List View Lightbox View

Mediapedia - Search!

Community ModelInternal

• Record business knowledge• Allow media identification for collection assessment • Assist in the identification of media when managing collections in order to

maintain access to the content• Assist in the identification of media when managing associated

information technology infrastructure and associated dependencies for their lifecycle management

External • Share information and knowledge with others who also have a similar

needs• Provide information that is freely accessible and available to others for

their access and re-use• Develop a community of shared ‘trusted’ knowledge• Capture and recording of knowledge about physical media, and its

preservation, whilst it is still available• Collaborate on conservation options for preservation and access to

various physical media types.

Community ProposalInternal

• Record business knowledge• Allow media identification for collection assessment • Assist in the identification of media when managing collections in order to

maintain access to the content• Assist in the identification of media when managing associated

information technology infrastructure and associated dependencies for their lifecycle management

External • Share information and knowledge with others who also have a similar

needs• Provide information that is freely accessible and available to others for

their access and re-use• Develop a community of shared ‘trusted’ knowledge• Capture and recording of knowledge about physical media, and its

preservation, whilst it is still available• Collaborate on conservation options for preservation and access to

various physical media types.

Mediapedia

Contact: delford@nla.gov.au

Mediapedia information available at:http://www.nla.gov.au/mediapedia/

Other web projects:Prometheus Digital Preservation Workbench on SourceForge:http://prometheus-digi.sourceforge.net/

A Digital Preservation SkunkWorks Project