The highlight of the AMIA conference for me and frankly, the most optimistic, was the outstanding presentation from Johan Oomen of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
The presentation did a great job outlining their digitization project, their mission, the workflow and the web portals for access into the collection. The goal is clearly about the value returned by allowing direct access for the general public, commercial interests, educators, researchers, scholars, etc. to tap into their a/v holdings. The approach is well-rounded, well-funded and well executed. They have created mechanisms for the systematic ingest and cataloguing of A/V content and have also created visually simple, user-friendly web interfaces into the collection tailored to different markets and users needs.
It looks good, its forward thinking and its being productive….a model for us all.
Besides the look and feel of the portals I especially enjoyed the creative way of engaging the public to help with meta-tagging challenges. They created a web game that assigned points based on speed, accuracy and whether the info was matched and assumed corroborated by other players. In a relatively short period of time they’ve gotten a large number of players adding data into the system.
Clearly, the Netherlands team is well ahead on the digital road and blazing a trail that we may be wise follow. I hope that large US based projects like the pending CPB American Archive project take a hard look at this execution for inspiration and guidance.
The theme throughout the conference and perfectly illustrated in this presentation is that IT’S ALL ABOUT ACCESS. Access creates value, whether financial, educational or cultural, that can fuel the overall effort and be the justification. You need to have a good reason WHY and they do….do we?
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