Multimedia

Lorna Hughes, NYU, Jean Anderson, University of Glasgow

Where are we now?

This topic covers several areas of technology and all academic disciplines. Multimedia, meaning the combination of digitized data in different formats (text, sound, images, animations, video and film), are used in all disciplines for teaching and research. Language study has a particularly long involvement in applying multimedia tools and resources. 'Hypermedia' is the term used for Web accessible multimedia data.

We list below the main areas that this paper addresses, with a few examples. The examples are not exhaustive and are meant only to give a few indications of the type of work to which we refer:

 

Generally, there are three categories of projects: research, resource creation, and resources management. University based projects in the humanities computing disciplines often have a small number of staff, with other full time academic responsibilities, who nevertheless are involved in all three categories.

Who are “we”?

Our present constituency comes from within the Association for Computing in the Humanities, the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing and the academic community of humanities computing. There is also a wider constituency of stakeholders, including: performers, technicians and network experts; scholars in archives, museums and libraries. Visual imaging and multimedia professionals are not yet part of our community, industry makes the decisions in these areas are dictated by imperatives of the computer and entertainment industries - at present, the academic community must just await their pronouncements.

Advances in multimedia and hypermedia are therefore informed by activities and research and development in:

  • education – language studies, performance studies, film studies, anthropology;
  • industry – multimedia, imaging, network technology;
  • computer science and engineering; o arts professions – performers, artists;
  • entertainment industry – film, television, games;
  • designers of teaching and performance spaces;
  • cultural heritage organizations – archives, museums.

 

Stakeholders need to collaborate and communicate: pieces of projects come from many areas and must be multidisciplinary. This requires multi-professionalism from both academics and professionals in industry. There are few humanities computing academics or cultural heritage workers engaged in technical development, and yet we have much expertise to offer industry, computing science and engineering: not only as content creators but as informed users and generators of new ideas.

Multimedia tools are now generic at the desktop: programs such as Quicktime, Realplayer, iMovie etc. are in use by all personal computer users (including primary school children). The methodology is starting to catch up with the tools but there is still work to be done on the management of large multimedia projects and on the categorization of multimedia objects. In education we still find a separation of form and content, resources being listed by media (CD, Web) rather than by topic. This suggests that the newer media are not yet fully accepted, taken for granted, by all users.

Where are we going?

We see the main challenges for computing humanists as follows.

The costs of digitization are high - equipment, staff salaries and the cost of maintenance are all expensive - and educational institutions are already under financial stress due to the rise in student numbers.

 

  • High bandwidth is required for accessing multimedia resources on the Web and we are all aware of the digital divide in respect to under-developed countries. This also exists in the UK. A recent survey of Internet access in the UK found that 32% of the populace had access, but in Scotland only 15%, and very few of those had high-bandwith access. We must continue to be aware of this in our projects.
  • Metadata for digital objects is well developed for access, retrieval and management of resources, but there is still work to be done on metadata for sounds and especially for moving images. The creation of hypermedia archives and resources is driving work on both metadata and methods of defining relationships. This work is primarily being done in academic projects, such as the Library of Congress Making of America project; METS; and the NYU moving image archive initiatives.
  • Sustainability is already a problem. The community is now much more aware of obsolescence in computer hardware and software, and in playback devices. Digital preservation issues are now a key part of most projects (we hope). Industry has long knowledge of deterioration in analogue media; the life span of digital media is not yet known and we must ensure the dissemination of good practice in academic projects.
  • Scalability is an issue here. Can 'good practice' in large scale multimedia projects be replicated by small projects?
  • To ensure preservation a decision has to be made whether to use analog or digital format for archiving, e.g. Library of Congress Audio projects and the Shoah archive use analog formats for preservation.
  • Descriptions of objects using full metadata contributes to future possibilities of transformation.
  • Multimedia objects have different issues of storage and file size and formats. Decisions have to made about compression, about the preservation master object, about the derivative object for access. There is no formal technical standard as yet; what we have is emerging from industry and the humanities computing community has little input here.
  • We must be aware of legal issues; copyright in using modern time-based media in particular. Payment mechanisms for downloading music files are being developed by e.g. Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. Knowledge of legal issues (including data protection) in creating and sharing courseware and materials is now necessary. Guidelines are being produced especially for academic use with digital media, e.g. JISC Legal Information Service.

 

These challenges will be met best by collaboration - between different disciplines within academic institutions, between humanities, engineering and industry - and by sharing of resources by all these groups. Humanities computing scholars act as mediators, interpreters and bridge builders They can inform other professionals of the recent developments in adding value through metadata and encourage a focus on content and purpose, not medium.

A glimmer of hope on the horizon?

The global digital library is well on the way , with many institutions ppaving the way for this to be realized in the near future. Born digital materials are being catalogued and preserved with greater attention to their sustainability than has happened in the past. Digital object repositories are being created, e.g. the Flexible and Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture FEDORA.

Wireless technologies are developing and some standards are emerging.

Multilingual initiatives, and the increased development of Unicode, are simplifying access to and enriching the available resources. Archiving initiatives such as the CNI/Internet 2 working groups are developing advanced network applications and technologies, in partnerships of academia, industry and government.

The automation of processes and procedures is facilitating project work, with particularly promising developments emerging in metadata harvesting. Multimedia facilities are being integrated into building design and classrooms.

Computing humanists are disseminating their expertise through initiatives such as NINCH “Guide to good practice”, and “Database of Humanities Computing Projects”