episode number within a series
I've seen multiple methods of including an episode number in a PBCore record and am interested in which method to use. So far I've seen:
1. title = episodeNumber where titleType = "Episode"
2. identifier = episodeNumber where titleType = "Episode Number for {Series Title}"
3. extension = "asset_EpisodeNumber:"episodeNumber where extensionAuthorityUsed = "PBS PODS"
There may be other methods. Of the methods above, option 1 seems to have a higher vote, since both the Alliance for Community Media Server Standard's Working Group and Wisconsin Public Television both followed this method independently. But in option 1 if a program has a more formal episode title would there be any problem with two titles where titleType = "Episode". For example:
<pbcoreTitle><title>Curious George</title><titleType>Series</titleType></pbcoreTitle>
<pbcoreTitle><title>George Authors a Metadata Standard</title><titleType>Episode</titleType></pbcoreTitle>
<pbcoreTitle><title>987</title><titleType>Episode</titleType></pbcoreTitle>
“Common” PBCore Errors
Hello PBCore friends,
I've written a blog post on pbcore errors which may be of interest to the folks here. The focus is on errors which would impede interoperability. Feel free to post your comments, and/or tell me why these sorts of errors are not, in fact, problematic.
where to put extra details about contributors and creators
Thinking about what to do with additional (i.e., not standardized terms) info about creators and contributors.
A significant number of the titles we catalog have additional details about creators and contributors. I don't want to strip them out of the records... but I am not sure how to fit them in without either abandoning standardized terms or changing the PBCore structure.So if I take this:
pbcoreCreator
creator: Virginia Steffen
creatorRole: Producer
pbcoreCreator
And turn it into this:
pbcoreCreator
creator: Virginia Steffen
creatorRole: Producer, "World's Largest Catsup Bottle"
pbcoreCreator
am I no longer compliant?
That would solve a lot of my problems, because I could also do:
pbcoreCreator
creator: Laurie, Hugh
creatorRole: Cast (Dr. Gregory House)
pbcoreCreator
pbcoreCreator
creator: Nevins, Sheila
creatorRole: Exective Producer, HBO
pbcoreCreator
alternative would be change to structure of PBCore
pbcoreCreator
creator: Nevins, Sheila
creatorRole: Executive producer
creatorRoleDetail: Affiliation
creatorDetail: HBO
pbcoreCreator
the addition to the schema would be optional, but are still bulky. And pretty ugly, I admit. But I want to fit the data in without stashing it way off somewhere in a notes field. How important, then, is using standard terms from the picklist?
formatLocation vs. formatIdentifier
The examples on PBCore website are confusing to me. I am sure you are all shocked by this.
"The descriptor formatIdentifier employs an unambiguous reference or identifier for a particular rendition/instantiation of a media item." source: http://www.pbcore.org/PBCore/formatIdentifier.html Here's an example of formatIdentifier from that same page: Room 217: Section C: Shelf 5 How in the world is that a format identifier? Do they never put anything else on that shelf? That sounds like formatLocation to me, but I am hung up on formatLocation for reasons detailed below. So I am trying to figure out where to put two strings of data that both belong (as far as I am concerned) in formatLocation In the trial conservation database I made, I had formatLocation strings that looked like 0200-02-02419, Media Vault, Aisle 2, row 3, shelf 2 (where the number is the 2inch location code and the rest is the shelf info) or 1612-02-00784 1/2, Media Vault, Aisle 6, section 6 (where the number is the 16mm location code and the rest is the shelf info) So then I wanted to run a query to select everything in a given section and (I am a sql novice, I admit) I couldn't figure out how unless I separated the data into two fields. But you can't repeat formatLocation. What to do? (i.e, I wanted to run the query SELECT * FROM INSTANTIATION WHERE FORMATLOCATION = 'Media Vault, Aisle 6, section 6') Sorry, people, I am sure you have better things to do than do my cataloging for me...Identifying parent-child relationship
Hola! Here's a scenario. Archive master is 16mm. Preservation master is Beta-SP. We want a DVD copy. We make that off the Beta, not off the 16mm. Where in the instantiation record for the DVD does it say what the instantiation parent of this instantiation is?Dealing with multi-part instantiations
Dealing with multi-part instantiations in formatGenerations attribute?
Greetings, all! I am spending my weekend creating an SQL conservation database- it's a school project. Catherine Cormon said it took about 300 hours for them to develop InBlik. I'm trying to do mine in about 30.
Anyway, I was thinking formatGenerations might be a handly place to stow a note about instantiation parts. So instead of Archive Master you could have 'Archive Master part 1 of 2' and then the other instantiation would be 'Archive Master part 2 of 2'
You would still need structural metadata to tie the digital instantiations together if you wanted them to play in succession or something, but this might be a start.
TITLE SCOPE FORMAT_GENERATIONS
Conversations in Black and White. [1968, Unidentified Episode] 1 episode on 1 tape. Archive Master part 1 of 1
Conversations in Black and White. [1968, Unidentified Episode] 1 episode on 1 tape. Preservation Master part 1 of 1
Conversations in Black and White. [1968, Unidentified Episode] 1 episode on 1 tape. Access Copy part 1 of 1
Crossroads of the Future. [1948-01-10], Greece 6 episodes of different Lowell Institute series on 7 discs. This episode on 2 discs. Archive Master part 1 of 2
Crossroads of the Future. [1948-01-10], Greece 6 episodes of different Lowell Institute series on 7 discs. This episode on 2 discs. Archive Master part 2 of 2
PBCore Tool Quest
Back in 2005 I became somewhat obsessed with cataloging media on the job here at WILL Public Media. As the website manager, people would do things like hand me a videotape and say "can you put this on the web?" But what's on the tape? It became clear producers had no clue about the importance of recording actual information about their productions. Meanwhile I started learning about metadata and controlled vocabularies, and some of the cool things we could do with structured data on the web. This lead me directly to PBCore as the theoretical metadata standard for public broadcasting and beyond. If producers and stations could create PBCore-compliant XML records for their content, we could develop tools for automated exchange of deep information about media, and the media essence as well.
But we can't do much if nobody catalogs their stuff. So the question became what tools to use? Working with a graduate assistant from Library Science here at Illinois (the great Jimi Jones!), we embarked on a PBCore tool quest.
As we began digitizing and cataloging 15 years worth of the WILL-TV program Prairie Fire, we wanted a tool that would spit out PBCore XML. Jimi and I tried the free MIC database tool, and sorry MIC, but at least back then it was (ahem) a work in progress. We were somehow unaware of the free PBCore File Maker Pro database, which I guess is pretty OK, and if you've used it feel free to comment. So we tried things like using the open-source Greenstone repository software, which I wouldn't recommend for video unless you like migraines. We even started hand-coding XML using Oxygen, which is enough to make your eyes bleed after a while.
Eventually though I started thinking like a web developer, which after all is my job at WILL. We're using a Content Management System to "catalog" media for web pages. We use the same CMS database to output RSS feeds, which is a flavor of XML. Why not add a PBCore flavor of XML? So I added a bunch of fields reflecting the PBCore elements, and asked our producers to provide...a little more detail when adding their content to the website. The result was the new Prairie Fire website, released in January 2007, featuring among other things PBCore records of every episode and segment for every program over the past 15 years.
Since then we've continued to refine our little home-grown CMS-based cataloging tool. Here are a couple of screen shots that kinda show how it works.
This is a form for entering descriptive and administrative metadata based on the PBCore elements. Mary Miller from the Peabody Archives worked with me on this, and she likes to call it the "Platonic Record" of the media object, as it is purely the intellectual record.
This is the input form for the PBCore Instantiation, which is the actual physical or digital object being cataloged. The Instantiation is then linked to the Platonic Record. The result is a complete PBCore-compliant record which looks exactly like this. (If you hit this with Safari, do a View Source to see the XML.) So our CMS can take metadata directly from the Producer to create web pages, RSS feeds/podcasts, and PBCore XML. Why not?
But here we are now in (almost) 2009, and we need more than my cute little CMS solution. Which is why I'm so excited to see the work of Dave Rice and Mike Castleman, who created a much better online system called PBCore Vermicelli. This is a Ruby app that does everything I had set up, plus a lot more. So I wanted to call more attention to it, and suggest that it's a good starting point for much more powerful things to come. What things? I have a few ideas, but I'll pause here for now. Let's talk about it.
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