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Re: [ARSCLIST] MIC (Moving Image Collections) and Cataloging sound recordings
Thanks for the response. I was shown this catalog the last time I visited
LC. It's fine for what it does. It is still too clumsy for the private
collector, the mythical character whose needs, differing, often quite
sharply, from those of an institution, is the person whose needs this thread
has been addressing. If the MIC system can be made to accept the
information the private collector needs and supply it to him on the computer
screen in a more user-friendly way than has hertofore been the case, I'd
love to know about it.
I try to keep each email on this subject limited to one topic. See a
forthcoming one where I'll be describing different collectors and their
needs, at least as I see them.
Steve Smolian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jane Johnson" <jjohnson@xxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 4:12 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] MIC (Moving Image Collections) and Cataloging sound
recordings
Hello All,
A colleague drew my attention to the mentions of MIC (Moving Image
Collections) on this list, so I've joined up in order to answer some of your
questions. I'm MIC Project Manager at the Library of Congress.
MIC is a collaboration of the Library of Congress and the Association of
Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). Its initial development phase was funded by
a National Science Foundation grant, with Rutgers University Libraries as
the lead developer. (Other developers are the University of Washington for
the Archive Directory and Georgia Tech for the Website and search engine.)
As you may know, in 1994 the Library of Congress published the national film
preservation plan (Redefining Film Preservation), which had been mandated by
the U.S. Congress as part of the National Film Preservation Act. This was a
sort of "state of the field" report which described the crisis in film
preservation at that time. As a result of this study, the Library turned to
AMIA to prioritize the plan's recommendations and develop realistic
implementation plans. AMIA formed a Board-level committee and a number of
task forces, including the Cataloging Task Force, which identified the first
and most crucial step in a national moving image preservation strategy:
establish a standardized mechanism to identify holdings, particularly unique
titles, so that strategic planning and collaborative decision-making could
occur. The MIC union catalog was thus designed to provide standardized and
flexible access to moving image collections held by archives and
individuals. MIC originated as a preservation initiative, but it grew out
of the cataloging community. Sally McCallum and Barbara Tillett at the
Library of Congress, both leaders in the national and international
cataloging communities, serve on and advise the MIC Steering Committee.
In fact, MIC's innovative design is metadata-driven, and tightly integrates
a union catalog, directories, informational resources in a portal structure
in order to simultaneously address multiple goals of expanding education,
outreach, access, preservation, and research in culture and information
technology. The MIC mission is to immerse moving images into the education
mainstream, recognizing that what society uses, it values, and what it
values, it preserves.
MIC brings together in one place for discovery the wealth of the world's
moving images in all its variety of genres, forms, subject areas, and
formats, from a multitude of diverse organizations, regardless of
organizational type, size, mission, available resources, or metadata
standards employed. MIC's Union Catalog allows users to search across
multiple repositories to find current, detailed descriptions of moving
images, and the images themselves, for the first time. The Catalog is
complemented by an Archive Directory containing descriptions of collections
at the repository level.
In a field this diverse, it is not possible to impose a single cataloging
standard. Our strategy then is to accommodate the diversity while promoting
the use of national and international cataloging standards. Organizations
can locally maintain records customized to their own constituents and
requirements, while contributing records to MIC, which presents consistent,
homogenous displays on its website to all users. MIC maximizes
interoperability by accepting records in a variety of schema, mapping them
through its Core Registry of data elements
(http://gondolin.rutgers.edu/MIC/text/how/unioncat_registry_table_01_05.htm),
and making them available through a number of additional avenues for
discovery. An archive employing Dublin Core for ease of use in-house, for
example, can make its records available in MARC for Z39.50 access or in
MPEG-7 for low-level indexing. MIC also promotes standards by actively
demonstrating by example, in an actual working tool, the benefits of best
practices.
Currently, MIC can load records from several standard schema as well as
in-house schema, using its mapping utility, now in the testing phase. In
the works is a cataloging utility that will allow individual archives and
collectors to input records directly into MIC, to create descriptions for
preservation, management, and access purposes. This will empower small
under-funded organizations to make national standard records available to a
much broader audience without the extensive expertise, technical
infrastructure, and funding previously required for this activity.
Right now we are focusing on mapping and loading records for the 13 alpha
sites, plus a half dozen other organizations who have signed up to test the
mapping utility. Alpha sites were chosen to give us a cross section of
organizational and collection types and metadata schema, and to provide
access to some digitized resources.
The only criteria for Union Catalog participation are 1) machine-readable
records and 2) an entry in the MIC Archive Directory, because the Directory
and the Union Catalog databases are linked. (A key innovation of MIC is to
integrate the Archive Directory and the Union Catalog so that information
about obtaining an organization's resources is displayed right alongside the
bibliographic record supplied by that organization.) The organization (or
individual) submits an application, sample records and field list, then MIC
populates an online form with this data so that the organization can name
MIC data element equivalents for its own fields. This utility will allow
small under-supported archives--and individuals--with very little metadata
expertise to share their records with a much broader audience, while
enabling large archives to integrate multiple metadata schema into a single
system.
In addition to providing access to materials through its Archive Directory
and Union Catalog, MIC offers informational resources through a portal
structure that allows delivery of customized information on archival moving
images, their preservation, and the images themselves to a number of diverse
constituencies: archivists (including preservationists, catalogers, and
exhibition programmers), educators, and the general public. All of MIC's
components (Union Catalog, Archive Directory, information resources, and
portal structure) work together to enable collaborative community building.
The information resources, created and gathered by experts in the field,
contribute to the continuing education of archival professionals. The
Archive Directory, by systematically gathering and normalizing data about
organizations' archival practices, gives archivists the information they
need to build collaborations, evaluate cataloging and preservation
activities in similar organizations, and self-identify organizations with
common interests. They can then exploit MIC's portal structure to sponsor
research and education portals, and offer active collaborative training and
development in areas of mutual interest. This promotes strategic
decision-making and management at national and international consortial
levels. Archive Directory data can also enable sponsors LC and AMIA to
identify and target particular training needs, potential collaborations, and
emerging trends, in order to focus community training and support.
Archivists will also be aided in their day-to-day work by the planned
Service Providers Directory, listing individuals and organizations supplying
professional services and products for archival moving image collections.
Designed to complement the Archive Directory, the Service Providers
Directory will include listings for labs, professional associations, funding
agencies, stock footage researchers, consultants (in appraisal,
preservation, collection management, library science, etc.), and service
providers in the areas of digital data storage and migration, environmental
monitoring, etc. The Directory will also list companies selling, renting,
servicing, and repairing archival moving image equipment and supplies. We
will provide password-protected access so that vendors can create and update
their own entries, as well as administrative tools to support automatic
annual requests for updates. The Directory design is based on usability
studies conducted for the MIC Archive Directory and will utilize MIC's
search engine and architecture. Watch for the test version of the
Directory, to be released this summer.
In addition, MIC's design will enable research and development in emerging
technologies by making available a representative cross section of moving
image bibliographic records (currently around 340,000) in a variety of
metadata schemas. Computer science researchers and the archival community
can partner to explore issues such as digital rights management, active
privacy policies, and fair use, or low-level indexing such as text or facial
recognition.
Last but not least, MIC serves as a model to facilitate parallel projects in
allied fields. We believe that MIC would serve as an excellent model for
the archival sound recording community; in fact the acronym MIC was chosen
because it could stand for "Media In Collections" as easily as "Moving Image
Collections." While we continue to consider the possibility of MIC's
expansion into the area of archival sound recordings, another option would
be to develop a parallel initiative for the sound recording community which
would utilize and build on MIC's existing and powerful infrastructure.
This year the AMIA conference will be held in Austin, Texas, November 30
through December 3, 2005, and MIC will be on the agenda. Karl, I hope you
will drop by and have a look!
Please visit MIC at http://mic.loc.gov. If you would like to receive
regular MIC updates via the MIC-Announce list, or would simply like more
information about MIC, please don't hesitate to contact me. Thank you for
your interest!
All best,
Jane
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jane D. Johnson
MIC Project Manager
Library of Congress
jjohnson@xxxxxxx
(202) 707-5903
(732) 445-5904
(732) 445-5888 (fax)
Visiting Scholar
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
MIC: Moving Image Collections
A Library of Congress-AMIA Collaboration
http://mic.loc.gov
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