Dan Pisarski, thanks for the note. The issues here are so many-layered it
is hard to sort them out. The activity you describe is, of course, not
limited to metadata: you and your educational-video-distribution
colleagues are no doubt defining the types of essence or bitstreams that
are needed, approaches to packaging and delivery, and the like. Your
operational model may use some form of "master" file(s), stored away, and
the just-in-time production of derivative formats tailored to different
customer/audience groups.
Metadata in a context like this may bear some resemblance to what
broadcasters use when exchanging program content, and my sense is that
emerging practices may bring broadcasters to widespread adoption of
MPEG-21 or MXF (or who knows). The broadcast activity still is in its
infancy, although (for sound) the EBU Broadcast WAVE format is
interesting, as is SMEF metadata from the BBC. And there are other
initiatives elsewhere in broadcasting -- I know there is a metadata
investigation in PBS, for example.
Sounds to me like you are on a good track: you are working with others in
the community of educational video distributors to cook up a family of
approaches to serve your own work, maximizing what is borrowed from other
communities in order to support interoperability. (That's why you emailed
METS after all!) I imagine that your community's real needs are program
distribution and "asset management." Although these are not necessarily
coterminus with content preservation, it is great that both current needs
and future preservation are on your minds as you plan. For your purposes
you may only create a chunk of the metadata needed by the future
preservationist but it is likely to be the most important chunk.
Best from Carl
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