Generating PBCore Instantiation data
To follow up on the comments in Jack’s last post I posted XSL and workflow information that can translate the XML output of MediaInfo and turn it into a PBCore instantiation element (not the whole record, just the technical side of PBCore).
The XSL and a drag-and-drop Mac application of it are at http://www.avpreserve.com/pbcore-instantiationizer/.
An article about the development and related issues is at http://www.avpreserve.com/pbcore-instantiationizer/pbcore-instantiationizing/.
Overall transforming many of the metadata fields from MediaInfo’s output to PBCore is fairly straightforward (mediainfo:overallbitrate -> pbcore:formatdatarate, mediainfo:filesize -> pbcore:formatFileSize), but fields such as formatTracks and formatChannelConfigurations are a bit of a challenge to automate.
Any feedback on this is appreciated.
Dave Rice
Use of PBCore in the American Archive Pilot Project
Illinois Public Media was one of the 20-some public TV and Radio stations in the CPB-funded American Archive Pilot Project. The AAPP required participating stations to use PBCore as a metadata format, at least in principle. I decided to push implementation of PBCore in my AAPP content collection as far as possible using the toolset I used on a previous video archive project (Prairiefire on WILL-TV).
This toolset is based on the website Content Management System called ExpressionEngine, which makes setting up a particular database structure rather easy. I set up the database structure based on PBCore elements, with controlled vocabularies reflecting the AAPP taxonomy and suggested PBCore picklists. I then created xml templates in ExpressionEngine to render my AAPP collection metadata as valid PBCore records. I then went one step further, following discussions with Dan Jacobson and David Rice, and created a PBCoreCollection wrapper containing all 235 of the PBCore item records (each as a PBCoreDescriptionDocument) in my collection. The national portal for the AAPP, being developed and hosted at Oregon Public Broadcasting, was able to simply ingest the PBCoreCollection, demonstrating the viability of this approach to aggregating a large collection from multiple content sources.
This article details the methods used to accomplish this in ExpressionEngine. Similar methods could be used in Drupal, which we’re working on now.
More on Use of PBCore in the American Archive Pilot Project
XML Bad Practices — Introduction — Robin Berjon
Perhaps this series is of interest as PBCore goes forward
"XML is now over ten years old and can euphemistically be dubbed a success. That being said, I don't believe I need convince readers that not all of its uses have been successful. Over time, many bright minds have attempted to describe how to best make use of it when designing vocabularies, but I believe it is safe to say that those efforts, no matter how excellent, have not been sufficient in ensuring that all applications of XML are produced in an entirely sane manner."
From http://berjon.com/blog/2009/12/xmlbp-intro.html (via http://delicious.com/anarchivist)
PBCore Recommendation : PBCoreCollection
Over the last few months, I have worked with Jack Brighton and Dave Rice to have the NPR API (http://www.npr.org/api) output PBCore as a supported format. In the early stages, we were able to put together a mapping of NPRML (our native XML format) to PBCore. From this mapping, my team and I started conceptualizing how this would work within the framework of the API. This exercise ultimately failed because of a philosophical issue between PBCore and the NPR API.More on PBCore Recommendation : PBCoreCollection
Some thoughts on future directions of PBCore
For the last couple weeks, I've been thinking about some ways PBCore could changes to be easier to use and friendlier. Part of this was spurred by the PBCore 2.0 RFP, but also while I was trying to figure out how to teach PBCore to a workshop introducing XML at AMIA '09. This allowed me to take a step back from my use of PBCore to power digital archives and think about some bigger picture issues. I've been jotting my thoughts down elsewhere, but it would be more helpful to the community to record them here as well.More on Some thoughts on future directions of PBCore