Project Documents from the First Phase of the
Recorded Sound Digital Preservation Prototyping Project

NOTE: The overall family of prototyping projects being carried out by the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division includes explorations of the scanning of motion picture film and the reformatting of video recordings from tape to digital files. The prototyping of recorded sound reformatting has moved through two phases. The first phase (1999-2004) made a preliminary assessment of transfer technology (audio workstations) together with a thorough examination of digital-object packaging and METS metadata. The second phase is elaborating on the development of transfer technology and extending the division's use of the MAVIS collection management software into the realm of recorded sound. This Web site currently offers access to documents from the first phase of the recorded sound prototyping project and is to some degree an archive of historical information.


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Project Overview and Context | Digitization of Sound Recordings | Metadata | Additional Early Project Documents

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Project Overview and Context

The first phase of the recorded sound digital preservation prototyping project explored a number of elements from 1999-2004. It digitized sound recordings in both an on-site laboratory and with specialized sound preservation contractors. There was been extensive development of metadata, especially technical and administrative metadata. The project has also examined issues and drafted documents related to digital systems that would be appropriate for the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia.

Digitization of Sound Recordings

Metadata

The definition of intellectual (descriptive), administrative, and structural metadata and the development of methods for its capture and management were important aspects of the first phase of the prototyping project. At the time, the project's metadata was first captured in a relational database (during production) and subsequently output as an XML document. The XML document and its associated audio, video, and/or image files were considered as a possible submission information package (SIP) for ingestion into a digital repository conforming to the OAIS (Open Archival Information System) reference model. This model is also the source of the term archival information package (AIP).
  • About Capturing Metadata during Production
    • Presentation that looks back at the METSmaker software (HTML from PowerPoint) developed in 2002-03 for the project. (Link to the PowerPoint file.) November 2003.
    • Diagrams for the table structure of the database back end as of March 2002: TIFF image (ITU Group IV compression, 61 kilobytes); JPEG image (264 kilobytes).
    • Data dictionaries for each category of metadata are provided as links from the extension schema menu.

  • About the XML Structure for Metadata
    • The first phase of the prototyping project used METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard).
    • The project developed and used a variety of extension schemas in the METS context; this description represents the schemas and their related data dictionaries as of February 2003.

  • About METS metadata as a possible basis for an AIP

  • About Metadata and Content Presentation
    • Illustrative Mockup of the presentation of a folk music recording and a long-playing music album. Presentations like these are created using the METS XML document as data, or by transformations of that data for a Web browser. This mockup was produced in March 2002.

Additional Early Project Documents

These documents are somewhat out of date but may contain discussions of interest to some readers.
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June 1, 2007