Contents:
- 1. Introduction
- Characteristics of Moving Image and Recorded Sound Content
- Summary of Requirements for a Content Model for Audiovisual Resource Description
- 2. Comparative Analysis of Existing Content Models
- 3. Requirements for Moving Image and Recorded Sound Content at the Library of Congress
- 4. Toward a Generic Content Model
- 5. Alignment with BIBFRAME
- Appendix A: Recorded Sound Issues Related to Music Types
- Appendix B: Data Models for Discographies
- C. Challenges with Complex, Multi-part Audiovisual Works
- Resources
The Library of Congress’ BIBFRAME Initiative aims to develop a “new foundation for bibliographic description, data creation, and data exchange more suited to the web and networked world. In addition to its goal of replacing the MARC format, it intends to accommodate different content models and cataloging rules, exploring new methods of data entry, and evaluating current exchange protocols”. As part of this work, the Library of Congress commissioned Audiovisual Preservation Solutions to help define an appropriate data model for AV material and to relate that to the BIBFRAME model.This report “aims to identify the content description needs of the moving image and recorded sound communities and specify how those requirements can be met within a semantic bibliographic data model designed generically to support all content types found in libraries.”It begins by describing the special characteristics of AV material that make it different from textual and other media (time-based, multiple creators/contributors, uniqueness, aggregations & collections, multiple generations and uses). After presenting an overview of the current landscape of cataloging content models for moving image and recorded sound such as FRBR/RDA, FIAF, OLAC, indecs, Variations, PBCore and EBUCore, it then proposes a generic content model that factors in the requirements for audiovisual content types. Finally, it proposes changes to the BIBFRAME model and vocabularies. Three appendices provide more detail about specific situations encountered with AV Material.The report was carried out in close consultation with the Library of Congress’s National Audiovisual Conservation Center (NAVCC) staff in Culpeper, Virginia and hopes to “encourage discussion about descriptive data needs for audio-visual content and materials at the early stage of BIBFRAME development” and “serve as a common starting point for that discussion across various communities”.
This study is valuable not only in how it clearly describes how audiovisual resources differ from other resources; it does a good job in demonstrating how different descriptive approaches taken by different av communities (television, film, sound, music) has resulted in the development of many different, and sometimes conflicting, metadata models that then negatively impact search and retrieval. The generic model it presents is very interesting and can hopefully lead to a resolution for archives that hold a large variety of content types and thus need flexibility in describing its collections but do not want to inhibit search and discovery of its collection.