Class notes 10/12/10

Today we talked about metadata for non-text media.

• Here’s one controlled vocabulary (subject terms) for art and architecture (images, artifacts, buildings, plans, etc.) from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles: http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat/

• The New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery holds images and photographs from the library’s collections. These are organized by collection but also assigned subject metadata (click Subjects A-Z at the top of the screen to browse by subject): http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=cities

We also began to discuss the research process. Here’s a link to the research tutorials (flash-based) from Trinity Western University in Canada referred to by Badke in our textbook (the URL in the book is incorrect, this is the correct website). These might be a useful accompaniment to the textbook in the coming weeks: http://www.twu.ca/library/flashtutorials.htm

Here are the powerpoint notes: LIB1201_1012 (PDF)

Blog Post #8

In the article Managing content in a rich media world by Dan Goodin, Goodin addresses the several conflicts with managing electronically produced content such as “videos, audio clips and digital images”. He begins with the example-storage of content in the Dallas Museum of Art, which has been a conflict for 26,000 images and research that cannot be accessed through one computer-rather through several computers in different departments. Goodin- introduces us to DAM (Digital asset management) a solution for information storing under one roof (literally) instead of using outside storing facilities. Broadcaster, the Discovery channel who also owns Animal planet uses four different DAM systems to manage music, video, and images. DAM uses the metadata method (as mentioned in Badke, metadata in chapter 4-an organized way of using a search engine. The searches are specific unlike Google, where the search is based on the word being in that sentence, category or tag etc.) But with DAM it allows more accurate searches-and in some cases allows to search using voice recognition and “optical character recognition”, the results are precise.  I was very surprised that museums, large real estate and pharmaceutical companies face problems with storage capacity. With museums, it seems difficult to store and find every bit of information saved, but with metadata its easier for the researchers and the public to access the exact information they need. Its something I never really gave thought too. After the reading, I actually went on the MOMA website (museum of Modern Art) to check their web engine. I searched Henri Matisse and received many categories of Matisse’s great works throughout the 1900’s in images,sketches,paintings and multimedia. It allowed me to find exactly what I needed, depending on the category.

Class notes 9/16/10

In today’s class we discussed non-text media: images, audio (including music), video (including TV and movies) and multimedia.

The websites we discussed are below, and I also snapped a picture of the whiteboard with our discussion question and some of the ideas you shared during discussion (click to see a larger version of the image):

• Visual imagery has also moved from print to digital, and many museums feature images from their collections on their websites, like the Brooklyn Museum (click the Collections link). Also note that the museum has a blog on which it publishes news + interacts with the community, and uploads images to Flickr as well.

• Photo sharing websites like Flickr are another way that images can be distributed digitally. Flickr is also an example of user-generated content — photos are uploaded by users and tagged with keywords to facilitate searching.

• Many radio stations now broadcast via the internet as well as over the airwaves, like WFMU, a radio station in New Jersey.

• Apple’s iTunes service is one of the major distributors of digital audio and video content (including music and podcasts).

• Major label, smaller label and independent (unsigned) musicians in all genres have embraced MySpace as a way to distribute their music and gain new fans. (And, of course, MySpace is a social networking website, too.)

• Course lectures and other academic podcasts (audio and video) are also increasingly available online. Academic Earth is website that aggregates content from universities and colleges; iTunes U provides a similar service.

• Of course, YouTube is one of the most popular ways that digital video can be distributed. It features everything from home videos to academic lectures to music videos and more.

• The Please Rob Me project aggregated data from Twitter and foursquare (a location-aware web service) and presented it as an ever-expanding list of home burglary opportunities. It’s a pretty clever comment on some of the privacy issues that can arise from using these media in new ways.