IMLS Fellowship Blog

IMLS Projects, Semester 2

2008-04-15T22:24:00.003-05:00

This semester I have been engaged in two projects, one of which I don't recall the name of, and the continuation of the ATN project. The project which shall remain nameless was a last minute offering that focused on web 2.o technologies. One thing Nameless taught me is that I am not an IT person. I do not have the background, nor the capacity or interest to pick up everything web 2.o in a few short weeks. I know thats not what the organizers of this project ever intended, but I think thats partly what I expected of myself. Maybe the LIS/Apps department thought I was bringing more tech skills to the table than I actually have. Whatever it was, circumstances lead to something of an uphill battle.

Things did, however, get off to a pretty good start. Apps was interested in the LibraryThing tags and the LibraryThing for Libraries widget because the University of Iowa's OPAC, Ex Libris' Primo, has a new tag function that is relatively useless until there is a critical mass of collected tags. I looked into these things and also into other libraries using the widget and it made more sense to approach LibraryThing to see about purchasing a Tag Boost (copyright pending). LibraryThing was indeed already in negotiations about making this work, but it sounded like Ex Libris was being difficult about access to Primo code. LibraryThing staff said things were likely to be worked out in a month or two. At this point Apps felt it best just to sit on our hands and wait to see what happens with the negotiations.

Following the LibraryThing investigation, this project moved into its second phase... implementation of the Google Mini Search Appliance. More on that and my thoughts on my overall experience as a digital libraries fellow to come....

The end of an era

2008-04-15T21:53:00.003-05:00

I know its been a spell since I forked over a flannel mouthful of fuss. And it ain' t because I've been full as a tick, roostered, or half seas over neither. Nope. Seems we got a spoke in the wheel. Not on account of any ole body, but just because sometimes things all come a cropper all by their lonesome. So nobody go running around with the scuttlebutt, waking up the wrong passenger. Yet I do reckon I feel I got it in the neck a bit. And I sure wouldn't mind throwing up the sponge and heading to the bone orchard because at this point in the semester I don't care a continental. Then again, I don't want nobody thinking I'm just trying to beat the devil around the stump. Politics. One thing I will say is that both of my mentors, the Big Bugs, are all aces-high, game as banty roosters... teaching a croaker half way between hay and librarian to fight like Kilkenny Cats.

Fall 2007, Weeks 9 - 11

2007-11-14T08:14:00.004-06:00

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
-- Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) --

"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid." -- John Keats (1795 - 1821) --

The above are words of advice anyone taking on an experimental digital library project absolutely must keep in mind as they stumble along their merry way. I believe I began my last post with the famous last words " things are turning around," or something to that effect. The very next day, or shortly thereafter, the U-Matic deck malfunctioned yet again.

There once was a man named Bob, who took on an unpaid job.
He made some repairs, to a tape deck that had erred.
But now that he's gone I've got probs.

Bob isn't responding. And you know what? That is okay. The guy isn't paid to do work for the library. So what do we ? Herein lies the problem....

Special Collections will split the cost of a new deck. DLS, based on advice from Bob, thinks spending money on a new deck is silly since all decks will likely have the same problems. What we've been trying to figure out with this collection is - can we do this in-house? That is, can we reformat obsolete analog video media to a digital file with money only for storage with the equipment available in the library usable for no cost? After weeks and weeks of repeating failures we've decided the answer is no.

The deck is malfunctioning in two ways. 1) Its old and the mechanisms aren't engaging and releasing properly, and 2) the tapes are shedding. Sticky shed syndrome is a problem with our tapes. Not only are the magnetic particles flaking off and clogging the tape heads, but they are flaking off and degrading the video signal with every movement. We do not have the means to deal with tape cleaning, potential baking, and tape head cleaning. Time to outsource.

During the last three weeks Preservation got involved in the project and came up with some money. We now have the funds to have 30 tapes reformatted at the university's Center for Media Production. Not my first choice. They will reformat the tapes to DVD and save a digital copy on hard drives that DLS gives them. 10 tapes are being sent over but we have no idea what file format the digitals are going to be, or what quality of DVD media they use.

OH WELL!!!!!! Its come to my attention that the preservations issues are beyond my control. Far, far beyond my control. Maybe, one day, I'll be in a position with the authority and resources to preserve a video collection in my own vision.

So, Basically for the next week I worked selecting clips and compressing clips from the digital video files on the hard drive in the InfoArcade. The clips will go on the ATN web prototype. The clips are reformatted to flash video files (.flv) and are no more than 3 minutes in length for copyright purposes. I also extracted still images from the clips to use as thumbnails for the video clips.

Also during these three weeks I designed the interface, and am now tweaking it a little with the help of the DLS(?) webmaster. I should mention that any tapes with serious problems will be sent to VidiPax for resoration. With funding limited, we will use the web prototype with the clips from the thirty tapes CMP reformats as a visual aid in requesting a grant or other such funding to finish the project.

And the ongoing video preservation bibliography for the report I will submit to DLS about this project.

I talked with my mentor about next semester and it looks like there will be some work to be done on this project. So hopefully I can stay in the department working on a new project and doing work on this video project as it comes around.

Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal. -- Mike Ditka (1939 - ) --

Fall 2007, Week 8

2007-10-22T11:11:00.002-05:00

Full steam ahead. Chugging away at production.

Really not too much to say here. I guess I could say that I am totally pumped up about being in the full swing of production. Everything is going smoothly for once. Here's what I do:
Insert U-Matic tape into deck. Fast forward to the end, rewind to the beginnging. This acclimates tape the the environment and gets rid of bad tension on the spools.
Play tape into computer through DVCAM deck. While playing tape I capture in Final Cut Pro. I then export a DV NTSC 48 kHz Quicktime movie to the hard drive. I then transfer that file to the library server.

Next I select a segment of the video for the web collection, or use the whole thing and export a Flash video file (.flv). Move this to the server. Select a freeze frame from the video to use as a thumbnail for the video. Export as jpeg and move to server. I also clean up the ends of the video so there rough ins and outs. Though part of me wonders if I should be saving the color bars.

Next is the metadata creation, for which we're using Dublin Core. Here's a link to my single completed record: http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/atn&CISOPTR=0&CISOBOX=1&REC=1

The trouble with the metadata for me so far has been the uncontrolled vocabulary "Keywords" attribute. Its difficult to accurately define video art.

What else...? Oh somewhere in there we up load the .flv files to a different server that will house all the video for my collection.

Oh and a problem I ran into: 30 minutes of video is about 6.34 GB. When transfering these files over to the library server, the server connection times out. So what I have to do is cut these videos in thirds, keeping the segments under 3GB. This means that whn working with the files in the future we will have to stitch the video back together. Not too difficult, but still this NOT ideal.

Fall 2007, Weeks 7

2007-10-22T10:41:00.000-05:00

Things are finally coming together.

Week 7 is hard to describe since most of my time was spent researching trends and technologies for digitally archiving video. The week can also be said to be a period of finalization of scope. After getting a firmer grip on what we are going to do with the digitized video, it was easier to know what we can do with the digital collection in the rest of the semester.

Here's the story.

Inventory ATN collection. - - Check! We have a worst-case scenario of 145 hours
of video at 13 GB per hour. This is about 2TB of
video.
Cost analysis - - - - - - - - Check!
2TBs external hard disk storage, approximately $1000.
DVDs, $300.
DVCAM, $2239 for 145 64 minute tapes. OUCH!
Server storage, $10 a gigabyte. Ouch, ouch.

Every format has its ups and downs. Without a lot more money we cannot get a totally lossless digital master video file. What we have on hand is the U-Matic anolog-to-DV conversion through the DVCAM deck into Final Cut Pro. The best signal we get out of this is DV NTSC 48kHz. Yes, it is a bit compressed, but considering that we're coming from 30 year old U-Matics, the compression won't be all that noticeable. Also in consideration of the 30 year old tapes: we don't have time to wait around for better equipment. I've already seen some serious signal loss (though after putting up a post on the American Moving Image Archivists list-serv I may be able to get some signal back by cleaning and "baking" the tape. I don't know how to do the prior, and I don't know what the latter even means... some other time).

DVD is super compressed, 1/5 of broadcast quality signal in the DVD MPEG2 compression format. Good for access though.

DVCAM. Tape is tape and tape is vulnerable. Vulnerable to impacts, manufacturing errors, environmental stress, etc. And it only has a life expectancy of 5 - 15 years to boot. Considering the cost of DVCAM tapes and its lifespan, this is not the way to go because we would just have to migrate again in 5 - 10 years, spending more money.

So what will we do? This project is an experiment. I think I'm the only one with any video experience and that is scary. Sid likes the external hard disk approach with DVD access copies. Digital Library Services wants me to focus on the digital collection without getting too bogged down in preservation and thinks external hard disks are too fragile, not to mention need preparedness for platform/software emulation. What they want me to do is digitize an A-Team selection of tapes, store them on the server, and get to work cataloging and building the collection interface. Good idea.

I am soooooo interested in video preservation, and I have learned some about this confusing subject this week. I would like the opportunity to learn more, but Nicki pointed out that if I don't move forward with building the digital collection I won't have anything to show for my work. Good idea. I'll move forward with the collection and worry about the preservation more later.

Fall 2007, Week 6

2007-10-04T21:13:00.000-05:00

With the U-Matic deck malfunctioning again last week I had some time to rethink my project plan. I realized late last week that I was trying to do too much. I need to scale back my own efforts in a way that allows me to get my hands on reformatting creating metadata, cataloging, and designing an interface. I also need to set up a system that allows others to easily pick up the bulk of reformatting, and maybe some of the metadata.

This was what I was thinking early in the week. On Wednesday, however, I had a 3 hour meeting with Bob Burns, Chief Engineer for the Cinema & Comparative Literature department. Bob had been involved in repairing our U-Matic deck and was curious to learn more about what I was doing. It took some time to figure out why the guy was being so nice to me, but it turns out that he is of like-mind about video preservation. It turns out there are film and video caches abound that need reformatting. Bobs efforts in the past have generated great interest, but not enough to garner any funding. He saw what I was working on and offered to share his experience and technical wizardry.

From our meeting I discovered there were many things I was doing wrong.
1) I had been reformatting to 124 minute DVCam tapes. Sony is able to stuff 124 minutes of tape into the same cartridge used for a 60 minute tape by reducing the backing of the tape by half. This is bad, bad news from a preservation standpoint.
2) Not only was I using the wrong tape, but tape is is just plain vulnerable; it should only be viewed as a transitional reformatting medium. Though I understand the point here, its a little unfair since all formats have vulnerabilities.
3) If I'm reformatting from U-Matic to DVCam I should be capturing the signal to the Final Cut Pro workstation since the DVCam deck is already connected to the computer.... I did realize this its just that having the time to reformat a tape then convert it to DVD was something I was still trying to negotiate.
4) Bob thinks DVcam is unnecessary. He educated me on certain brands of DVD Video discs that under proper conditions should hold their content for approximately 100 years.
Two things about this:

I don't think we could get away with just a DVD reformat of the U-Matic content. This is because for video to fit on a DVD it needs to be compressed to MPEG-2, so any future reformatting efforts would not be from the raw video file.
Second, if we're digitizing the entire tape for DVD production, we already have the digital file, so why not make a digital master file and store it on a server or an external hard drive, or both?

Bob also showed me a little about DVD Studio Pro.

All of this was so great and I am forever indebted to Bob, but now I am as confused as ever about the direction of the ATN digital collection. What I am going to do now is a cost analysis report to determine the most effective way to reformat the ATN collection. I will also do some more in-depth research on video preservation. It seems obvious to me know that this research should have been done earlier, but I am new this is a learning process for me. Its not like I came to school here after having worked at the UCLA Film and Television archives for 5 years.

While that is happening I am going to digitize excerpts from the limited VHS access copies that resulted from the last preservation effort ten years ago. This will allow me to start working on cataloging with metadata and building an interface. Finally I see a way for this to go forward as it needs to. We were just moving too fast to consider all the preservation needs. I'm not sure DLS sees me as having a role in the preservation side of this, but I am actually quite interested in video preservation and this was partly what drew me to this project.

So new plan: From cost analysis and preservation research develop a plan for reformatting; meanwhile build a prototype digital ATN collection from VHS access copies; later, develop catalog of reformatted ATN collection using metadata records. Somewhere in there the whole ATN digital collection will get attention.

Fall 2007, Week 5

2007-10-04T21:11:00.000-05:00

U-Matic deck malfunctioned again this week.
Frustration mounting.

DLS and Special Collections appear to have differing ideas about what this project is. Its confusing and has me feeling like a pain to both parties. This is basically my doing because my interest in the ATN collection lies both in digitizing and preserving the collection. Its becoming increasingly clear that this project is too huge for one semester. This week I have regret that I didn't choose to work on a project that was already moving. All I can do is position the project plan in such a way that allows me to accomplish my goals while building a framework for future development of the project. I can only reformat and digitize so much if I want to get some experience with metadata cataloging and interface design. My project plan must now be restructured so that everyone's interests are considered, yet articulates that there are too many barriers to make huge leaps in one semester.

Fall 2007, Week 4

2007-09-27T14:39:00.000-05:00

Turkey Day all week. On Monday I worked out a rough metadata scheme with Jennifer Wolfe, DLS Metadata Librarian. Video art hasn't seen much metadata so a standard approach wasn't there to feed off. It was a lot of new information to absorb. For a second I felt I much have too much on my plate. Early in the week I was apprehensive about having to physically reformat the video, learn metadata standards/vocab, catalog an entire collection existing in multiple formats, design an interface, and become reasonably proficient with ContentDM, MIME, HTML (maybe XML too), CSS, LCTGM, and video compression. By the end of the week, however, my brain had bent and I had a better grip on it all.

Wednesday the 19th I had a meeting with Preservation, Special Collections, and Digital Library Services to discuss everyone’s roles and needs as a way to nail down the scope of the digital ATN collection. My conclusion that making the online collection of clips to serve as an advertisement for the physical collection was shot down. I guess I had lost site of the difference between an online exhibit and an online collection. Instead I will begin by building a boutique collection with full-length videos and clips. This will build the foundation from which we move to a full-access digital collection. We discussed how there definitely are opportunities for full-length videos at this early juncture especially the work from the donor and work from Hans Breder who was professor of Intermedia at the time and did some work with ATN. The idea being that if we build a model of full-length videos and clips, it would be easier to get other artists to permit reproduction for use in the digital collection.

Other things we discussed were uncompressed digital master video files, getting a GA to create DVD access copies, developing a workflow (especially with the folks in the Info Arcade), coming up with a final count of actual U-Matic tapes needing reformatting, Dublin Core vs PB Core for metadata, and the actual real transfer time. Nancy Kraft reaffirmed that from a preservation standpoint, going to DVCam as a master instead purely digital was the more sound approach. She also emphasized that U-Matics was way too unstable for the reformatting not to be a priority.

Speaking of U-Matics… the library was all set to go ahead and purchase an newer U-Matic deck, but we were visited by a tape deck goblin who repaired our deck. Bob Burns, engineer in the Cinema and Comparative Lit department said we’d have problems with any U-Matic deck we bought. So to avoid risking potential damage to the ATN artifacts, reformatting is a biggie. Next week I have more metadata schoolin’ with Jen Wolfe, will finish my project plan, will develop a workflow for DVD access copy production, and will start reformatting the U-Matics to DVcam. This last activity also entails creating instructions for the GA’s that will eventually take over this part of the project.

Fall 2007, Week 3

2007-09-18T10:59:00.000-05:00

The biggest development for week three was the discovery of the artists’ contracts forms from the ATN collection. When Jaime Davidovich, President of the Artists’ Television Network transferred the collection to the University of Iowa, we assumed the rights that ATN held. When artists signed the contracts they agreed to allow ATN to use up to three-minute excerpts of the videos for promotion of ATN activities. This has largely been the discovery that will define the scope of the digital ATN collection.

The ATN digital collection will be a database of these three-minute clips, presumably of all noteworthy content, if not the entire collection. This will serve as advertisement of the physical collection that will be accessible to professors for course material (and maybe students?) as well as researchers from outside the University. In the future if need be we will work to gain full reproduction rights from artists so we may put their entire videos online/ Because the collection has gone relatively unknown for so long, gearing up the collection for use requires some preservation work.

The project now includes reformatting the entire collection from ¾ inch U-Matic tapes both DVCam, for a preservation copy, and to DVD, as an access copy. The three-minute clips will be pulled from the DVCam’s. As a part of this preservation effort, I will also be building the first ever catalog of the some 426 plus tapes. Sid Huttner, Head of Special Collections, believes the most effective way to do this will be to serialize the tapes (001U-Matic, 001MDVCam, 001DVD, etc) and to condense the shorter clips onto as few tapes as possible. The locations will then also need to be indexed by time code. It’s a lot of work, but I’m excited to get the collection functioning as it should.

The 426 plus tapes range in duration from two minutes to 60 minutes. To ease the pain of this arduous digitization process, it has been suggest that I take advantage of the Information Arcade’s Graduate Assistant, having her do the bulk of the transfer once the process is running smoothly.

Early in the week Nicki Saylor (DLS), Mark Anderson (DLS), Pam Kacena (Media Services), Lisa Martincik (Infor Arcade), and I met to discuss equipment use. We concluded I could use Media Services old U-Matic deck for as long as I wanted and could use the Info Arcade’s DVCam decks and Final Cut Pro workstations for the transfer. On Friday I set up to begin the reformatting process.

The U-Matic deck from Media Services was scary-old. I put the tape in pushed play and nothing happened. I then turned the machine off and on and got the tape to play. I ejected the tape, re-inserted it and it stopped working. So I took the machine upstairs, took of the top and freaked out… the master tape was engaged in all of the machines mechanisms! After a couple of hours of performing surgery on the machine I got the tape out WITHOUT DAMAGING IT! So after some pleas of desperation, it looks like the library will buy me (the library) a newer deck for the reformatting. That process is on hold for a bit.

Next week I meet with Jennifer Wolf, DLS Metadata Librarian, to discuss metadata issues for the ATN collection. I will also meet with Nancy Kraft, Preservation, Sid Huttner, Special Collection, and the DLS staff to nail down the Project Plan.

Fall 2007, Week 2

2007-09-09T19:31:00.001-05:00

Project Background:
The Artists’ Television Network was a cable broadcast channel in New York operating from 1976 to 1984. All tapes were donated by Jaime Davidovich, President, Cable Soho. Exact administrative structure is unclear, but Cable Soho and ATN are more or less the same thing, with Cable Soho the station that broadcast on the AT Network.

Tapes consist of interviews, variety shows, and original video and performance art. Major figures in collection include Cindy Sherman, John Cage, Gregory Battcock, Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Dara Birnbaum, Marina Abramavic and Ulay, Lucy Lippard, jean Dupuy, and Nam June Paik.

The collection started in the mid-1980’s when Davidovich donated the materials to the University of Iowa’s Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Art collection, under direction of Estera Milman. Vision for the ATN project included using the collection as a base from which to expand into an media and research center. The direction of the project collapsed apparently due to conflict of administrative figures involved.

Project Problems:
The most significant problem facing this project is that of copyright. I searched the print materials associated with this collection for a few days and finally came across some University of Iowa documents from when the collection was being built and funding secured stating that artists would retain all copyrights unless otherwise noted on the tapes. I did find release waivers from Gregory Battcock and Steven Poser, who were involved in discussions and interviews. Basically this means I will need to start contacting artists directly for reproduction rights.

There is a filmmaker with connections to the University who recently did a John Cage documentary. I’m working to contact her for ideas on how to get reproduction rights for the Cage interview. Also, I joined ALA’s Video Round Table where I was connected to some listservs for librarians working with video and media. Its nice to know there is a responsive and supportive network of professionals out there who aren’t above helping a newbie.

One other problem is access to equipment for viewing and reformatting the U-Matics. Campus resources having proven reluctant to help in providing access to a deck, unless of course we want to pay them $80 an hour to reformat for us. Apparently students aren’t to be trusted with antiquated tape machines that aren’t in use by anyone. $350 for a deck on eBay. I say shell out the clams so Special Collections can actually provide access to the content. You know, use the collection for what it was intended. This is totally unfair to Special Collections since the ATN tapes have gone al but forgotten.

Progress:
Weee-hu-hu-hu-hu-hell, not so much. I’ve narrowed down our copyright problem; too bad its bad news. We’re getting closer to getting the equipment we need. And coming to a full understanding of the difficulties of putting this collection online has allowed me to wrap my head around a realistic scope, which is due to DLS this coming week with the rest of the Digital Project Evaluation.

Scope:
I’ll update you when I actually articulate in on paper.

Fall 2007, Week 1

2007-09-09T12:18:00.000-05:00

IMLS Fellowship:
In 2006 the University of Iowa was awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to recruit and train 20 students in the area of digital librarianship. A major part of this fellowship is the students’ involvement in digital library projects around campus. IMLS fellows will work on various projects during our course of study to develop a broad skill-set and understanding of the scope of undertakings in the field.

Fall 2007 IMLS Project:
Determining each fellow’s project involved submitting to SLIS DL administrators a list of our top three choices. Projects were selected by SLIS DL admin and project mentors, I believe.

I was initially given the Artists’ Book Collection project, my primary choice. This project was to be mentored by Nicki Saylor, Head of Digital Library Services. Content provider would have been David Schoonover, Curator of Rare Books. Nicki Saylor set up an orientation session for fellows working under her. I was to be out of town during that time so I met with Nicki a week early.

During our meeting I asked her about setting up my own project in the future to work with the Artists’ Television Network collection. When I returned to Iowa City the next week, Nicki informed me she had arranged to have my project switched to ATN.

The great thing about this project is that I will be able to build it from the ground up in my own vision. This is also cause for much difficulty… more on that next week.

Thoughts on courses/program:
During the eight-week session this summer, eight of the ten fellows took Intro to Informatics. This course, in Professor Segre’s words is an “introduction to computer science for informaticians.” It was difficult, and I learned A TON! After the midterm I felt like my dog had died; after the final I felt like I lost my home to a tornado after a fire had just burned half of it down.

Now we’ve moved on to the three core courses: Computing Foundations; Conceptual Foundations; and Cultural Foundations. During the SLIS orientation I spoke with Professor Hsieh about Computing Foundations. He said it would be very much like Intro to Informatics. So far we haven’t done much. The extra time, though, is giving me a chance to finally learn some HTML. Looking at the syllabus I think that the Networking, Design of Automated Systems, and Relational Database sections of the course will be valuable. This is good because at first glance it seemed the course we be redundant after having Informatics. I’ll keep you posted on this. If the course seems more basic than Informatics, I would suggest that if the next cohort of fellows has the opportunity to take Intro to Informatics in the summer, that they be allowed to replace Computing Foundations with something more advanced.