UPF NEWS

Avid Open Media Framework Interchange Selected as Foundation For Advanced Authoring Format    Author or Rep: Microsoft 4/14/98

"LAS VEGAS, Nev. (April 6, 1998) - At the 1998 National
Association of Broadcasters Conference (NAB), Avid¨ Technology,
Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) is announcing that it has licensed certain
portions of its Open Media Framework¨ Interchange (OMFI) to a
group of leading digital media content creation tool providers as the
core technology of the new Advanced Authoring Format (AAF). The
AAF will be used by film, television, and post-production
professionals to share and exchange digital media across multiple
computing platforms.

"Both OMFI and AAF are cross-platform interchange formats that will
help media professionals realize the full value of creating, editing and
distributing content in an all-digital environment. With the ability to
exchange media, compositions, and other data quickly and efficiently
between compliant systems, content creators will save time and
preserve quality by eliminating tape-based transfers. In addition,
content creators will gain the flexibility of interchanging digital
information between cross-platform applications and increase their
creativity by viewing elements in place during the creative process
that can enable last minute changes."

QuickTime gets nod for MPEG-4    Author or Rep: MacWEEK staff 2/12/98

"Apple's QuickTime technology received a ringing international endorsement
today when a consortium of high-tech companies announced that the
International Organization for Standardization, better known as ISO, has
adopted QuickTime's file format as the cornerstone of MPEG-4, the group's
forthcoming multimedia standard."

"The group, which includes Apple, Netscape Communications Corp., IBM
Corp., Oracle Corp., Silicon Graphics Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., said
QuickTime has been tapped as the starting point for a common file format for
digital media. MPEG-4, which is due to be frozen at the end of this year and
finalized by the end of 1999, will support multiple bit rates and a variety of file
formats, the companies said."

-----------

"Peter Hoddie, Apple senior QuickTime architect, said the ISO was won over by
QuickTime's support for multiple file formats across platforms as well as its
ability to scale content to a variety of bit rates."

Disk Technology to Hold up to 12 TB     Author or Rep: Denise Harrison 12/29/97

While excitement about potential growth of (DVD) storage technology swells, another
technology is on the move -- a technology that marketers say is quantum leaps beyond
DVD. The HD-ROM and Pancake Disc developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory
and licensed and sold by Norsam Technologies (Los Alamos, N.M.) promises a single
2-inch disk holding up to 650 GB, 47,000 images and 1,000 times the capacity of most
CD-ROMs. 
The company says that the Pancake Disks can withstand fire, are completely nonmagnetic
and will last thousands of years without any type of storage or maintenance
requirements.

PaperDisk by Cobblestone Software    Author or Rep: Thomas Antognini 12/22/97

PaperDisk "connects printed documents to the world of digital information" by storing and communicating digital data via the printed page. 

The way it works: the program prints out special patterns, called "datatiles" that represent computer files that you select. The document can then be acquired via a flatbed or even hand scanner. PaperDisk will then "extract and store the original files on the reader's PC."

UPF is currently looking at PaperDisk for its potential as a platform independent storage media for digital archives. 

If you have a PC running Windows, you download a demo of this intriguing product.

From website:
"Cobblestone Software, Inc. is a startup company based in the Route 128 area outside
of Boston, Massachusetts. The company was founded by Dr. Thomas Antognini and
Professor Walter Antognini, the creators of the PaperDisk technology. Cobblestone's
mission is to enable, and popularize, hardcopy data storage. We believe that nearly
every printed piece of paper has a digital story to tell, and we are dedicated to forging
the link between paper and the digital world. "

AMIA Conference: UPF will give presentation on 11/21/97    Author or Rep: Thom Shepard 11/4/97

UPF Project Coordinator Thom Shepard will give a presentation at the AMIA conference on November 21, 1997
from 4 pm to 5:30. The slides for that presentation may be downloaded from the homepage of this web site.

UPF User Survey is Now Ready    Author or Rep: Thom Shepard 11/4/97

In case you missed it, the long awaited UPF User Survey is now available. Here is a reprint of the message that went out to various archive listservs:

The Universal Preservation Format User Survey is now available on-line via the UPF homepage: http://info.wgbh.org/upf

Anyone within range of this listserv posting is welcome to fill out this form. As stated in an earlier message, the information collected from this survey will be presented at the next meeting the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Study Group for the Universal Preservation Format will be held on Tuesday, December 9, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Sony Corporation in San Jose, CA.

It is crucial that those who establish technical standards hear from those who will be most affected by them. Our proposed standard will have an impact on video and film collections, but on all materials that are digitized for the purpose of preservation.

To access our survey, just click on the "User Survey" link on our homepage, fill out the form, and click on the "Submit" button at the bottom of the page. You will then be prompted to return to the UPF homepage. If you haven't had the opportunity to look at the information on this site, please think about doing so now. In particular, download some of our colorful presentations in Adobe Acrobat format.

If you have trouble accessing our survey or web pages, please send me email at thom_shepard@wgbh.org .

Thom Shepard
UPF Project Coordinator
WGBH-Boston

............

The UPF project is sponsored by the WGBH Educational Foundation and funded in part by a grant (97-029) from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives for the purpose of advocating "the need for a platform-independent Universal Preservation Format, designed specifically for digital technologies, that will ensure the accessibility of a wide range of data types into the indefinite future."

SMPTE Establishes UPF Study Group   
10/6/97

SMPTE has assigned an official Study Group (ST13.14) for the UPF initiative. Titled "Requirements for a Universal Preservation Format" and chaired by Dave MacCarn, the group met on September 22 to establish an agenda and to hash out statements of objectives and tasks, which read as follows:

Statement of Objectives
¥    The study group will document requirements of data formats for the preservation of electronically generated media and related information. 
¥    Extensive input from the archival community will be gathered through the use of surveys and meetings.


Specific Tasks and/or Documents
¥    Some areas of study: Containers, Objects, Labels, Metadata, Composition, Rosetta stone for future coding and translation, and the coordination of other SMPTE activities that may be useful. 
¥    Explore the possibility of a universal format and guide to the storage of collections.
¥    Based on the requirements gathered, the study group will investigate available technology and explore configurations in order to provide a basis for a working groups' recommended practice or standards.
( SMPTE Engineering Committee Work Assignment/Work Statement)

   The next meeting of the SMPTE Study Group will be held Tuesday, Dec 9, 3:30pm-5:30pm, at Sony Corporation, San Jose, CA.. Our goal for that meeting will be to convey the needs of users from the archival community, both by presenting the results of our user survey and by enlisting archivists to attend.


Apple Announces QuickTime's OMF Importer    Author or Rep: Apple Development 9/22/97

QuickTime's OMF (Open Media Framework) Importer, a new extension to QuickTime,
was recently introduced by Apple. This extension streamlines the media creation process
for producers of digital media content by allowing them to use QuickTime-enabled tools to
manipulate the audio and video stored in OMF-formatted files.

Apple Unveils QuickTime 3.0 for Windows and Mac OS    Author or Rep: Apple 9/19/97


Video Capture, Editing, and Playback on Multiple Platforms Now Possible


QuickTime 3.0 Supports Wide Variety of Digital Media File Formats 
Media Abstraction Layer Promotes Compatibility and Innovation 
QuickTime 3.0 Supports DVCAM and Accelerated Visual Effects 
QuickTime: The Foundation for Leading Video Software Tools 
Customer Price/Availability 
Developer Price/Availability

Corbis and Live Picture To Bring FlashPix Format To Stock Photography   
7/29/97

"Corbis Corporation and Live Picture, Inc. announced today a strategic partnership to incorporate FlashPix technology into the digital images in the Corbis Archive. Corbis' Archive contains more than 20 million images, with nearly 1 million in digital format, making it the world's largest collection of
digital images. Corbis will begin transferring images to the FlashPix file format during 1997. In the future, imaging professionals will be able to preview and evaluate high-resolution FlashPix images through Corbis View, an online service that allows customers to view and order images."
_____
_____

"Founded by Bill Gates in 1989 as a privately-held company, Corbis is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and is directed by Doug Rowan, president and CEO. Corbis is on the Internet at http://www.corbis.com."

ISO Archiving Standards - Eighth US Workshop    Author or Rep: Bruce Ambacher 7/25/97



"The goal of this workshop is the development of materials to support development of draft ISO standards supporting the long term preservation of analog and digital information. The focus is the preservation of information obtained from observations of the terrestrial and space environments. However, preservation of information obtained from other environments is not precluded from these efforts."

SAA Annual Meeting to be held August 28-31 at the Fairmont Hotel, Chicago   
7/25/97

SAA's annual meeting will be held August 28-31 at the Fairmont Hotel, Chicago, Ill. For more information:

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT - Teri Dahlbeck explains the dissolution of CI Labs by the Board of Directors    Author or Rep: Teri Dahlbeck, Larry Perlstein 7/23/97

This site also provides a FAQ on the future of OpenDoc.

"We are in the process of transitioning our key assets to the sponsor companies. Our last day of operation will be June 30, 1997."
---
"We are in the process of transitioning our assets (OpenDoc, SOM, Live Objects Validation Kit and Branding) back to our sponsors. We understand that Apple and IBM are looking at providing access to the code technologies to anyone interested, particularly the university channel and yourself, in hopes of promoting the technology, similar to the Linux model. We will send you an update on this as soon as we learn more." Teri Dahlbeck, President

______________________________________________________

"As for the future, Apple, IBM and CI Labs are working to make OpenDoc and other
pieces such as CyberDog and ODF and the Live Objects Validation Kit code available
to you in the public domain. Many of you have already offered to carry the banner and
work to keep OpenDoc alive and growing. Once the final details are worked out, you
will receive another E-mail notice with this important information. We also expect to
keep a very minimal CI Labs web site, and the OpenDoc-Interest list running for
another month to provide you with information, pointers and a forum to discuss future
developments." Larry Perlstein, Director of Developer Relations

IBM Positioning of OpenDoc    Author or Rep: IBM 7/23/97

"IBM recognizes the value of the investments that were made in the OpenDoc's component
technology by IBM, Apple, CI Labs, and our customers, and thus wishes to continue to make the
OpenDoc technology (including source code) available for interested developers to exploit in the
context of their C++ solutions. 

"The IBM OpenDoc technology is available to download at no cost, and is being provided as 'as is'
freeware without formal IBM technical support. IBM plans no major new releases beyond the
currently available OpenDoc v1.2, but does plan, at a future date, to make full OpenDoc source code
available in the public domain for reuse by advanced C++ developers."

Electronic Media SIG Meeting, June 1998    Author or Rep: Paul Messier 7/11/97

The next meeting of the Electronic Media SIG will be held as part of AIC's general session, scheduled for June, 1998 in Washington, D.C. Please contact the AICÊoffice for registration information. 

Speakers for this meeting are currently being arranged. If you have an idea for a speaker or a topic please contact Paul Messier. 

The Electronic Media Special Interest Group, functioning within the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, has drafted the following goals:

"- examine the materials used to store electronic information, such as magnetic tape; 
- examine the various electronic media, such as video and installation art; 
- determine strategies for managing file format and machine obsolescence; 
- foster a discussion regarding the ethical issues raised by preservation measures; 
- develop documentation protocols for electronic media."

UPF Paper published in latest SMPTE JOURNAL   
7/2/97

We are thrilled to report that David MacCarn's paper, "Toward a Universal Data Format for the Preservation of Media," appears in the July 1997 issue of the SMPTE Journal (vol. 106, no. 7, p. 477+). This paper, originally presented last October at the 138th Technical Conference and World Media Expo in Los Angeles, CA, introduces the concept of a standard format for digital preservation and serves as a foundation for the UPF Project.
We urge you to read this paper and address your comments and questions to the UPF listserv. If you do not have access to the SMPTE Journal, you may obtain David's paper through our web site homepage.

David MacCarn presents supporting paper on UPF at the Montreux International Television Symposium, June 17   
6/25/97

At the Montreux International Television Symposium, held June 12 - 17, UPF Project Director David MacCarn presented his paper, "Toward a Universal Data Format for the Preservation of Media" in conjunction with the June 17 program, "Archives -- The Challenge to Retrieve Your Asssets." In addition to his Supporting Paper, David contributed to the program's Round Table Discussion. This event was especially significant for the Universal Preservation Format project because it marked the first time that a discussion of digital preservation focused on the concerns of archivists working with video collections. 

The following is taken from the ITVS catalog description of the program:

Production
Archives - The Challenge to Retrieve Your Assets ÊÊ (15:00-17:30)ÊÊPetit Palais (A2)

Chairman: Jürgen Heitmann, Philips BTS +SMPTE, D
Vice Chairman: Horst Schachlbauer, IRT, D

Broadcasters face the problem of building and sustaining ever larger archives of audio-visual content. Content must be stored, accessed and retrieved rapidly and reliably for production, post production or distribution. Speakers will describe new concepts, their architecture of audio-visual libraries, emphasising the need for reliability, economy and speed of operation.

1) Digital Library: A Kernal Design for a Studio Environment
Speaker: Charles L. Dages, Warner, USA
2) Present Status and Perspective of NHK Audio-Visual Archives
Speaker: Shoichi Nakamura, NHK, J
3) From a Wide Range of Analogue Video Formats to Robotic Store and Digital Server for Remote Access to The
Audio-Visual Content:
Speaker: Denis Frambourt, INA, F

Round Table Discussion:
Chairman: Horst Schachlbauer, IRT, D
Participants:
Jürgen Heitmann, Philips BTS, D
Charles L. Dages, Warner, USA
Shoichi Nakamura, NHK, J
Denis Frambourt, INA, F
Oswald J. Verbeij, Philips Research, NL
Paul W. Kelly, Pioneer, U.K.
Jonathan Banks, RTI, USA
Dave MacCarn, WGBH Educational Foundation

Supporting Papers :
Hybrid Optical/Magnetic Disc Based Storage for Broadcast Archives
Paul W. Kelly, Pioneer, U.K.
Inspection, Maintenance and Rejuvenation of Videotape & Film in Broadcast Archives
Jonathan Banks, RTI, USA
Toward a Universal Data Format for the Preservation of Media
Dave MacCarn, WGBH Educational Foundation, USA

AMIA Seventh Annual Conference    Author or Rep: Gregory Lukow 6/17/97

Seventh Annual Conference:

The seventh annual AMIA conference will be held in Washington, DC, from November 17-22, 1997 (Tuesday through Saturday). The conference will be headquartered at the Hyatt Regency Bethesda Hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, with special events planned at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and at other locations in the Washington, DC area.

Hundreds of representatives from archives, production libraries, television networks, major studios and laboratories will participate in the conference, which will bring together AMIA members from across North America and around the world. The full range of issues involved in collecting, preserving and using archival moving images will be discussed during the conference in an ambitious schedule of
panels, presentations, workshops, technical symposia, and vendor exhibitions. In addition, AMIA's committees on Preservation, Cataloging & Documentation, and Access will meet, as will the association's Interest Groups on News & Documentary Collections, and Inédits (amateur footage). These meetings are open to all conference attendees.

Other events will include the association's annual Membership meeting; the fourth annual AMIA awards luncheon, featuring the presentation of the "Silver Light" career recognition award; and the annual "AMIA Evening of Archival Screenings," featuring excerpts from films and television programs recently-acquired or newly-restored by a broad range of archives and producers.

The Washington, DC conference is open to all, regardless of membership in AMIA. The preliminary conference program, registration forms, and hotel information will be mailed to all AMIA members as soon as they are finalized. Non-members who wish to receive copies
should contact the AMIA Secretariat. 

Gregory Lukow
AMIA Sceretariat
c/o National Center for Film and Video Preservation
The American Film Institute
P.O. Box 27999, 2021 North Western Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027
glukow@AFIONLINE.ORG

Metadata for the Millennium : Publishers must begin now to reshape their business for the new century    Author or Rep: James Lichtenberg 6/17/97

published in Publishers Weekly, April 21, 1997, p. 44+

This important article describes several initiatives related to metadata, including the development of the digital object identifier, "designed to facilitate electronic commerce." Though perhaps not directly related to the UPF, Lichtenberg's article is definitely worth seeking out for its insights into the importance of metadata to all content providers. One word of caution: the article gives as the DOI website, "http://www.doi.com"; the actual URL is "http://www.doi.org," to which you can find a link within the UPF Web site.
- T. Shepard, UPF Project Coordinator 6/17/97

SMPTE Engineering Meeting Schedule    Author or Rep: SMPTE 6/13/97

Dave MacCarn will chair a meeting of the SMPTE Engineering Study Group to discuss requirements for a universal preservation format.


SMPTE Engineering Meeting
Study Group ST13.14/03
"Requirements for UPF"
Princeton, N.J.
September, 23 5:30 pm

Television/Videotape Study Update    Author or Rep: Library of Congress 6/4/97

"Update: The 5-volume Television/Video Report should be available by the end of May 1997. Those persons who submitted written comments, testified at public hearings, served on task forces, and otherwise aided in the report's preparation will receive a complimentary copy. For everyone else, information will be posted here on how to purchase copies from the Government Printing Office. Portions of the report will also be posted on this Web site. For additional information, contact Steve Leggett, p: 202/707-5912, f: 202/707-2371; Internet: sleg@loc.gov"

Fujitsu and TV Tokyo Jointly Establish New Digital Archives   
6/4/97

"Fujitsu and TV Tokyo announced they have established a joint project for producing
high-resolution multimedia contents for digital archives."
---
"The aim of the project is to set up a digital archiving system to preserve the world's cultural heritage and to disseminate these contents in Japan and worldwide."
---
"The project consists of the following processes:

Recording by high-resolution digital visual devices using the latest multimedia technology. 
Storage in a multimedia database. 
Distribution in Japan and internationally on various types of media."

What is happening with OpenDoc and Cyberdog?    
5/27/97

From: Open Doc, Cyberdog, and CI Labs FAQ:

"Q: What is happening with OpenDoc and Cyberdog? 

"A: We are moving more of our resources for component technology
toward Java-based technology, which we believe is becoming the
industry standard. OpenDoc¬ and Cyberdog¬ will ship in Mac OS 8,
but we are not planning any major updates. Apple does not plan to
port OpenDoc to the OPENSTEP APIs (sometimes referred to as the
"Yellow Box") in Rhapsody, and this is a change from our earlier
announcements. In addition, CI Labs has been dissolved by its Board
of Directors and is in the process of transitioning its key assets to the
CI Labs sponsor companies, including Apple, IBM and Just
Systems. Meanwhile, the source code for OpenDoc remains available
through CI Labs through the end of April 1997. Various options are
being investigated regarding the availability of the OpenDoc source
code after this time."
_____
_____



"Q: How long will CI Labs be in existence? 

A: CI Labs is expected to be in existence until June 30, 1997. 

Q: Who will be responsible for licensing OpenDoc, SOM, Bento or OSA source code to interested third parties? 

A: Apple and IBM are investigating various options at this time."

Greetings.    Author or Rep: Thom Shepard 5/23/97

Greetings.

My name is Thom Shepard and on April 25, I began serving as coordinator for the Universal Preservation Format project. Working under Project Director Dave MacCarn and Project Co-Director Mary Ide, I will post information concerning our two-year mission, funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), as well as in part by Avid Technologies and Polaroid, to advocate for a platform-independent Universal Preservation Format. 

The UPF project's central goal is to produce and disseminate a <**>Recommended Practices<**> document concerning the preservation of digital data. This document will reflect the input and thinking from a wide range of people working in the preservation front lines. Our working group includes representatives from the standards organizations, technology manufacturers, distributors and producers, and the academic, archives and library science communities. 

To this end, I will maintain the UPF Web site and facilitate the UFP Listserv. In addition, I expect to post information, accessible through a Table of Contents Page on our Web site, that will fall into four general categories:

1. News: 

We will report on the latest developments to impact the goal of the UPF.
For example, what happened to Apple's OpenDoc and its subset Bento? 
Whenever possible, we will quote primary sources and provide URLs for those who wish to follow up on the information presented here.

2. Views:

We welcome reports from the front lines of those working in archives, digital preservation, or in any other area pertinent to the UPF.
For example, which formats are currently being used or investigated to preserve film and/or video?
How successful are archives in making their finding aids available on the Internet?
Which are the most exciting trends in the standardization of metadata?

3. Email:

We will be posting in chronological order many of the messages we receive through our UPF Listserv, unless specifically requested by authors not to do so.


4. Resources:

We hope to serve as a clearinghouse for information relevant to UPF that is available on the Web. Our links to Web sites will be continuously checked and updated. Whenever possible, we will assess these sources.

I hope to hear from each of you very soon.

Thom Shepard

Web site address: http://info.wgbh.org/upf/

Network Access to Multimedia Information    Author or Rep: C. Adie 5/23/97

Abstract

This report summarises the requirements of research and academic
network users for network access to multimedia information. It does
this by investigating some of the projects planned or currently
underway in the community. Existing information systems such as
Gopher, WAIS and World-Wide Web are examined from the point of view
of multimedia support, and some interesting hypermedia systems
emerging from the research community are also studied. Relevant
existing and developing standards in this area are discussed. The
report identifies the gaps between the capabilities of
currentlydeployed systems and the user requirements, and proposes
further work centred on the World-Wide Web system to rectify this.

The report is in some places very detailed, so it is preceded by an
extended summary, which outlines the findings of the report.

Warwick Metadata Workshop: A Framework for the Deployment of Resource Description    Author or Rep: Lorcan Dempsey, Stuart L. Weibel 5/23/97

"The agenda for the meeting gradually crystallized around the theme of identifying and resolving impediments to deployment of a Dublin Core style record for resource description."

Warwick Framework:A Container Architecture for Aggregating Sets of Metadata     Author or Rep: Carl Lagoze, Clifford A. Lynch, Ron Daniel Jr. 5/23/97

"The Warwick Workshop was convened to build on the Dublin core program and provide a more concrete and operationally useable formulation of the Dublin Core, in order to promote greater interoperability among content providers, content catalogers and indexers, and automated resource discovery and description systems. The second workshop also was an opportunity to assess the results of a year of experimentation with the Dublin Core. 

"While there was general consensus among the attendees that the concept of a simple descriptive metadata set is useful, there were a number of fundamental questions concerning the real utility of the Dublin Core as it was defined at the end of the preceding workshop. Does the very loosely defined Dublin Core really qualify as a "standard" that can be read and processed programmatically? Should the number of the core elements be expanded, to increase semantic richness, or reduced, to improve ease-of-use by authors and/or web publishers? Will authors reliably attach core descriptive metadata elements to their content? Should a core metadata set be restricted to only descriptive cataloging information or should it include other types of metadata such as administrative information, linkage data, and the like? What is the relationship of the Dublin core to other developing work in metadata schemes, particularly in those areas such as rights management information (terms and conditions), which were considered largely outside the scope of the Dublin Core?"

Berkeley Finding Aid Project    Author or Rep: Daniel V. Pitti 5/23/97

Abstract:
The archival community should develop and embrace an encoding standard
for archive, museum, and library finding aids. Such a standard would
ensure that Internet communication of finding aid data is effective,
and that the data endures independently of the computer hardware and
software used to create and use it. This is the underlying premise of
the Berkeley Finding Aid Project. Some have attempted to encode finding
aids in the MARC format, but with mixed results. Standard Generalized
Markup Language (SGML) is recommended as a better vehicle, as it has
the flexibility to handle the complex hierarchical structure of finding
aids and to capture the individuality of unique collections. SGML can
also facilitate access to digital surrogates of items in our
collections. The availability on the Internet of fully functional
collection information and item surrogates promises to dramatically
alter access and preservation.

Access to Digital Representations of Archival Materials: The Berkeley Finding Aid Project    Author or Rep: Daniel V. Pitti 5/23/97

The Library at the University of California at Berkeley:
three complementary research and demonstration projects
ultimate goal : a comprehensive standards-based digital archive and library system
provide access to digital representations of selected primary source materials, including pictorial materials. 
provide standards-based hierarchical access to collections through USMARC collection-level records linked to SGML-based finding aids linked to digital representations of the primary source materials. 

Berkeley Finding Aid Project. 
Main objective : provide the archive and library communities with a foundation upon which they can construct content and encoding standards for finding aids. 

The second initiative : the California Heritage Digital Image Access Project
"It will build on the work of the first project by linking USMARC collection-level records to SGML-based finding aids and the finding aids to digital representations of 25,000 pictorial items on California history from The Bancroft Library collections. 

The third initiative : the American Heritage Virtual Archive Project, currently being planned. 
"This project will involve collaboration between several respositories of different sizes and types who will explore intellectual, political, and technological issues associated with building a single virtual archive of primary sources documenting American history."

Web Conceptual Space    Author or Rep: Robert E. Kent, Christian Neuss 5/23/97

Abstract:

In this paper various tools and techniques from the mathematical theory of formal concept
analysis are applied to the conceptual universe of the World Wide Web. For the
efficient and economical management of conceptual knowledge, the new idea of conceptual
space is introduced. For the conceptual empowerment of the Web user, a new technique called
conceptual browsing is advocated. Conceptual browsing, which browses over conceptual
space along conceptual links, is dual mode (extensional versus intensional) and dual scope
(global versus local). 

From the Introduction:

This paper advocates a method called Conceptual Browsing as navigation and structural
browsing technique. It is based on the notion of ``conceptual distance'', a formal similarity
metric for documents. The algorithmic definition of similarity allows for an incremental browsing
of the conceptual vicinity of a document or a class of documents.

Digital Conversion of Research Library Materials: A Case for Full Informational Capture     Author or Rep: Stephen Chapman and Anne R. Kenney 5/23/97

Abstract 

Digital collections will remain viable over time only if they meet baseline standards of quality and
functionality. This paper advocates a strategy to select research materials based on their
intellectual value, and to define technical requirements for retrospective conversion to digital
image form based on their informational content. In a rapidly changing world, the original
document is the least changeable. Defining conversion requirements according to curatorial
judgments of meaningful document attributes may be the surest guarantee of building digital
collections with sufficient richness to be useful for the long-term. The authors argue that there are
compelling economic, access, and preservation reasons to support this approach, and present a
case study to illustrate these points.

Fundamentals of the IMA Data Exchange Recommended Practice    Author or Rep: Interactive Multimedia Association 5/23/97

Scope

This recommend practice specifies a method for cross-platform multimedia data exchange. Now, the exchange of multimedia data is encumbered by a multitude of file, container, and data formats. Exchanging data often takes complex translations of all these formats, increasing the complexity of development tools, increasing development time and costs, and limiting the market for multimedia content intended for use in title development. To reduce these barriers, this recommended practice specifies methods to exchange multimedia data among multimedia tool, content, and title producers across heterogenous platforms. This recommended practice does not try to solve problems of cross-platform data portability of published multimedia titles.

This recommended practice defines a flexible container format for data exchange, compositions for expressing relationships of multimedia data objects within containers and to time, and source descriptions to express relationships of multimedia data to digital and analog source material. In addition, fundamental data types and properties are defined to provide a sound foundation for the exchange of data objects.

This recommended practice is extensible and allows incremental development of additional standardized and nonstandardized components to meet the needs of its users. It is independent of any particular language or development environment.

CILABS: OpenDoc Futures    Author or Rep: David Berkowitz, Joe McIntyre 5/23/97

"7. ENGINEERING TRANSITION REPORT

"It is with great sadness that the Engineering Division write our final words to the OpenDoc faithful. We've been involved with OpenDoc since the early days and feel gratified to see how well it has been received by bleeding-edge component developers worldwide.

"We aren't sure exactly what is going to happen to OpenDoc in the near future, but we hope it lives on, if nothing else, as a shining beacon of sanity amongst the dark forces of the component industry.

"So without any further ado, as part of our overall transition to a world without CI Labs, the Engineering Division wishes to make the following announcements:

"Technical Process: CI Labs will no longer be responsible for the ongoing evolution of OpenDoc hence there is no need for the technical process. The Task Force BBS will be removed from the web site.

"Licensing: CI Labs will no longer be able to license OpenDoc, SOM, Bento, or OSA source code to interested third-parties. You will receive information as to whom you should contact for licensing information.

"Registration: CI Labs will no longer be maintaining a central repository of component properties.

"Mailing Lists: CI Labs will be turning off all mailing lists, including OpenDoc-Interest, ODF-Interest, and Bento-Interest on May 1, 1997. You will not need to unsubscribe -- mail will simply stop being delivered to you.

"Website: The CI Labs website will be dramatically scaled down as of May 1, 1997. Information will remain online that will direct interested parties to sources of additional information on components.

"This scaled down website will not include the Member Services area which is currently being offered within the members - only section of our website including:

Membership Survey 
Registry Database 
Members Rolodex 
Objectively Speaking Newsletter 
Taskforce BBS 
PR Tool Kit 
Live Objects Validation Kit 

"OPENDOC FUTURES

"The software industry has been in a continuous process of adopting critical ideas and making those ideas part of the foundation of the technologies that follow. For component developers, we already see the strength of the component ideas within JavaBeans. Thus, the skills and motivations for developing with OpenDoc may be applied to creating products based on beans, and in evolving JavaBeans, and other technologies, to provide the capabilities required to develop the level of product possible with OpenDoc.

"Products change, knowledge endures. AI (artificial intelligence) products diminished, but their ideas exist as elements of many end-user products today. OpenDoc raised the bar on what component technology is expected to deliver, and though a return in its present form is unlikely, many of the key technologies that established it as the premier component technology will endure.

"Having worked with many of you directly, we know that you have established your companies and yourselves as leaders in creating next generation products. We hope to continue to see innovative products and new uses of component technologies from you, and look forward to working together again."

David Berkowitz, Vice President of Engineering
Joe McIntyre, Director of Engineering

Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)    Author or Rep: Getty Information Institute Publications 5/23/97

The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), a database of artists' and architects' names in both standard and variant forms, along with biographical and bibliographic data, was published in print and electronic forms in 1994. The Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), scheduled for release in 1995, will organize geographic names worldwide into hierarchical clusters, with historically related information drawn from Getty Information Institute projects and historical atlases. 


Publications 

The Union List of Artist Names

The first edition of ULAN, the product of a seven-year effort to merge artist and architect names and biographical data from many different collections and databases in a single reference, is a milestone in the evolution of art information. For the first time, researchers can examine variant artist names from a wide range of contemporary and historical sources, including abstracting and indexing services,
visual resource collections, object collections, and scholarly documentation projects. Names are supplemented by citations to more than 27,000 sources, including biographical dictionaries, scholarly articles, and historical inventory and auction information. ULAN includes more than 200,000 names representing nearly 100,000 thousand artists and architects. Coverage matches the scope of the contributing documentation projects, consisting primarily of artists in the Western tradition from antiquity to the present. 

"The design of ULAN takes full advantage of the environment for automated information. The Getty Information Institute staff has designed an ideal tool...a powerful resource for 21st-century scholarship." Marcia Bates, Professor, Department of Library and Information Science, University of California, Los Angeles 

"I found ULAN:ART most useful in verifying artist name spelling...birth and death dates and nationality right at my fingertips! To be able to enter the data automatically into my database is a timesaver. The ease of use is its greatest asset.
It has already become a tool I cannot live without." Christina Updike, Slide Curator, James Madison University, and Past President, Visual Resources Association 

"ULAN:ART is very easy to use, very informative, better than any other single tool I've used for Western names. It marks the dawning of a new age for slide cataloging: an age of monumental, user-friendly, authoritative tools that can link interactively with our own in-house databases." P. Eileen Fry, Slide Librarian, Indiana University 

Electronic Editions

ULAN on the Web 
The entire ULAN is now available for online searching, by both artist names and biographic information.

EBU/SMPTE Task Force on Harmonized Standards for the Exchange of Television Program Material as Bit Streams     Author or Rep: EBU, SMPTE 5/23/97

The First Report of the joint EBU/SMPTE Task Force on Harmonized Standards for the Exchange of Television Program Material as Bit Streams is available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Status of Bento Containers (omf-request)    Author or Rep: Josh Goldman 5/23/97

The short answer is that SMPTE is working with Apple to get them to
release Bento so that they can adopt it as a standard. I'm not sure
whether they are trying to get the Bento Spec and API released or also
the Bento toolkit software.

In answer to your unasked question, in case you are not aware, there is
a lot of work going on in this area. 

The biggest piece is the SMPTE/EBU joint task force for Harmonized
Standards for the Exchange of Program Material as Bit Streams (tfhs). 
They are working on a requirements document and distributed a report at
NAB. The OMF team has had a representative who has focused on the
subgroup working on wrappers and metadata. The task force's ftp site is:

ftp://tfhs:tasksite@ftp.bbc.co.uk/pub/

They are having their next meeting in New Jersey, May 6-8 (next week).

In addition, the OMF group has submitted a draft proposal AES31-xxxx-X29
based on OMF to the AES working group SC 06-01. We have also submitted
a draft to SMPTE. SMPTE will discuss it in the June P18.27 meeting, but
I do not know if they are going to formally enter it as a proposal or
wait until after the tfhs has issued it's requirements document.

Personally, I think that OMF would be a better basis for a universal
preservation format than Bento because OMF provides a mechanism to
associate the metadata and digital audio and video data. Although OMF
uses the Bento container format, it provides more than just containers
for data. In addition, the OMF Toolkit (available free from our web
site) hides many of the low-level details of the storage and is
consequently easier to work with. In addition, because OMF supports
compositions (the description of how separate pieces are combined to
produce a complete program), OMF can be also used as the format for
digital post-production interchange and preservation. 

OMF could be used to both preserve the final production and to preserve
the editing decisions that went into it. This would make the stored
information much more valuable. It could be replayed unchanged or it
could be used as the basis for a revised program.

As for where the Bento information is available from Apple, I'll defer
to Jeff Bedell, who may be able to answer you.

Good luck, let us know what progress you make.

(And if you already know about the thfs, sorry, but given how many
groups are working on the container issues, it's probably a mistake to
assume that everyone knows about all.)

Josh Goldman
OMF Technical Writer
(If you reply, please send it to omf-request@avid.com, not to me
directly. That way the entire OMF team at Avid knows what's going on
and your message is more likely to get to the right person.)

APPLE is dropping OpenDoc and this web page will not be updated or maintained; it will disappear 6/1/97 or sooner.    Author or Rep: Jim George 5/23/97

This site contains the best collection of information on OpenDoc available on the Web. Unfortunately, the site may be gone by the time you read this. We at UPF will notify you when and where OpenDoc info can be found.
-TMS 5/21/97

MPEG-7 Seminar, Multimedia Content Description Interface Bristol, 9th April 1997   
5/23/97

Following the decision of ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 to develop a multimedia content description interface standard it was decided that a seminar to discuss user requirements should be held as part of the April 1997 SC29 meeting. The seminar, which was open to the general public, took the form of a set of presentations followed, on the next day, by a discussion of the impact these presentation would have on user requirements for the new standard.

This page was processed on 7/8/98 by Thom Shepard for WGBH.