Finding and Using Moving Images In Context

NARRATIVE REPORT STATING
THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE PROJECT

The infrastructure project, “Northeast Historic Film’s Moving Image Review Online,” grew out of a 2007 Maine Humanities Council planning grant and is integrated with a subsequent 2007-2008 NEH Digital Startup grant, “Finding and Using Moving Images in Context,” received five months after the MHC Infrastructure grant began. These latter two projects are closely related and both incorporate Greenstone3 digital library software.

For the past 12 months, April 2007-May 2008, we have been digitizing and creating Web-based tools for Moving Image Review (1988-present).

The infrastructure grant provided salary, contract funds, and honoraria for Maine residents Teeter Bibber, Robert Denton, and Paige Lilly. The project was carried out with partners Windows on Maine at the University of Maine, and the Maine Memory Network at Maine Historical Society, both state leaders in creating publicly accessible Web tools. We have coordinated our development with MIC, an initiative of the Library of Congress and Association of Moving Image Archivists, and the Internet Archive in San Francisco.

The work is predicated on detailed profiles of potential users of Moving Image Review Online and their projected interactions with it. By creating “Personas” describing the users we focused carefully on necessary attributes of the digital library. MIR Online Users PDF, zoom in on the PDF document to read user profiles, MIR Online features, and user behaviors.

The project selected and remains committed to Greenstone3 digital library software, an open source digital library software tool still in development, “a complete redesign and reimplementation of the original Greenstone digital library software …multilingual, multiplatform, and highly configurable… independent modules that communicate using XML.” Because we chose to work with leading-edge open source tools with both Greenstone3 and MIC, we are working ahead of available documentation and support. Our infrastructure development experience has often felt like we are the cow-catcher on the front of the train.

We are submitting this report in electronic form in order to demonstrate the progress to date. Paper copies, along with the financial report will be submitted to the Maine Humanities Council. We will send an addendum when Moving Image Review Online is made public. The list of products below the header “Personnel” leads with an overview of Greenstone3; please watch the screencast demonstration.

Personnel

• Teeter Bibber, digital project developer and standards coordinator.

• Robert Denton, Bowdoin College Senior Media and Design Consultant provided design consulting.

• Paige Lilly, Archivist, William S. Cohen Papers at Fogler Library, University of Maine, consulted on archival standards adherence and on indexing.

• Karan Sheldon, project director.

• Barbara Manning, business manager.

_____________________________________________________________

Our products, representing significant infrastructure steps, are as follows:

Greenstone3 digital library software, an open source implementation with custom design for Moving Image Review. Digital project developer Teeter Bibber narrates a 14-minute tour. Sections of the screencast are listed in this log, Screencast log PDF.

Several expectations of the manner in which the technology infrastructure of this project would be developed have proven incorrect. Initial work with Greenstone3 suggested that the Digital Library (DL) of Moving Image Review would be built on a server with remote login. It still appears that command-line tools will be very effective, albeit for DL collection upgrade, but local build of the DL followed by upload of the collection file is a better workflow. The demo collection that we took as our roadmap was built on XML structured documents but OCR text of Moving Image Review articles converted to Word files produce a more flexible format. Server install of Greenstone3 has been complex. The first partially successful install was informed by outdated Release Notes—an oversight on the part of the team that packaged the release. Since then, in the compatible environment provided by Kattare.com, a stable install has been achieved through error log inspection, re-compiling of broken components, and installation of dependent applications. Install on a laptop with XP is an effective development environment. Each of these forays has led to productive reformulation of tasks and clearer paths to progress. Greenstone3 is working for us as an integrated tool to locally process original objects, provide an environment for the resulting digital objects attached with minimal metadata, enable attaching richer emerging standards of metadata, and at the server level, it is the platform for Web-based delivery of Moving Image Review Online.

Digitization of 36 issues of Moving Image Review (MIR)
All issues of Moving Image Review published between 1988 and 2007 have been digitized and are publicly available online at the Internet Archive here. Copies may be viewed and searched in these versions: DjVu, PDF, B/W PDF, TXT, Full Text, Flip Book, FTP. Try it out; the Flip Book has a basic word search that uses yellow tabs to indicate results. At the time of this report (May 2008) there have been 75 downloads of the digitized periodical. The digitization by the Internet Archive was a significant in kind donation, thanks to Rick Prelinger.

Text files for 36 issues of Moving Image Review generated by optical character recognition (OCR), followed by manual cleaning and division into individual issues in our project work server.

Digitization and serving of Talbot and Barbara Hackett Collection, Branch Collection, and Gilbert Collection clips at Windows on Maine, University of Maine, Fogler Library. Marilyn Lutz, Director, Library Information Systems Planning at the University of Maine System Libraries, served as the point of contact and continues to support the project with a commitment of server space, cataloging, and discussion of Encoded Archival Description and other standards-based tools.

Indexing of Moving Image Review by Subject, Article type, Place name, Special topic, Genre, NHF Collection name, Organization name. These terms will be available in browse lists in the search interface.

Maine Memory Network commitment to coordinated exhibit creation and inclusion of video clips. Candace Kanes and Erik Jorgensen worked on a Hackett Collection tuberculosis sanatorium exhibit for MMN. Three meetings with MMN staff clarify joint work with Maine History Online joint exhibits planned for 2009. Discussions are initiated with History professor Richard Judd at the University of Maine regarding clips for the exhibits; he wrote a set of essays for Maine History Online.

Interface and results page design guided by Robert Denton, Bowdoin College Senior Media and Design Consultant. Download 2-page PDF of layouts.

PBCore, a new descriptive standard for moving images, a metadata dictionary completed and implemented with sample records by Sean Savage. Andrea Leigh, Metadata Librarian at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, created a metadata dictionary using PBCore for our item-level records; Sean Savage, recent NHF staff member now in California, has built sample records which will be used in the MIC cataloging utility (see below).

The MIC cataloging utility will go live in summer 2008; as of May 2008 we have administrative access with which to test our PBCore records. We will try out the METS mapping utility. The PBCore item level records will be linked to MIR Online records.

Establishment of URL, http://movingimagereview.org

__________________________________________________________________

Changes to project infrastructure
During the planning grant we identified a Maine-based Internet Service Provider, EES Consulting, located in Camden, Maine. Despite repeated promises EES was not able to provide necessary services including Java hosting, resulting in prolonged delays. By early 2008 we had transferred all work intended for EES to Kattare, a more able Internet hosting company out of state that specializes in Java, Servlet, and JSP hosting.

___________________________________________________________________
FUTURE

MIR Online
–Refining control of Greenstone3 plugins in order to improve and expand collection formats.

–Augmenting Dublin Core metadata set with format and media specific elements that comprehensively encode information about the objects associated with the text of Moving Image Review Online (e.g., EAD, PBCore, TEI).

–Implementing the controlled vocabularies and thesauri developed in this phase and revealing the team’s work through iterative design and development.

NEH Digital Startup
We received $28,000 for “Finding and Using Moving Images in Context,” Sept. 2007 - Aug. 2008. As the NEH Digital Startup interface and digital library structure is completed, we will return to the MIR Online content and complete the integrated digital libraries which share many components including structured vocabularies. Current NEH Digital Startup project reports are here. Scroll down and use “Previous Entries” key at the bottom left.

NEH Preservation and Access
We are submitting a proposal to the NEH Preservation and Access Humanities Resources program, due July 31, 2008 for a May 2009 - April 2011 implementation.
____________________________________________________________
Attachments

MIR Facets Table Summary of indexing

Article Types Departments such as Education, Collections

NHF Moving Image Metadata Dictionary (PBCore), Excel File

MIR Online Collections, Excel File

Subject Browse Library of Congress Subject Headings

Genre Terms PDF from Library of Congress Genre-form Guide

___________________________________________________________________

MIR Online MHC Infrastructure grant report
PDF of this document