This paper describes and demonstrates the work of the Performing Arts Data
Service (PADS) in piloting the networked delivery of moving image resources
for use in teaching film and TV studies and social history at the University
of Glasgow. Streaming high quality moving images poses many technical
questions, and we outline our solution which has proved robust within the
limited testing arena of the project. The main focus of the paper, however,
is on user issues, covering such areas as the choices we made for the design
of the user interface, what we have learned from our user trials and
evaluations, and what effects networked access to a library of moving image
material might have on pedagogic and research practices in the
humanities.
Overview of the project
A University of Glasgow consortium led by the PADS was chosen at the end of
1997 as one of two pilot sites for a new project to develop the delivery of
moving images to UK academic institutions via networks. The short-term aim
of the project, which was initiated by the British Universities Film &
Video Council (BUFVC) in partnership with the British Film Institute and the
Joint Information Systems Information Committee (JISC) is to test both the
technical and pedagogical viability of networked delivery of moving pictures
to universities. Over the longer term, it may be the opening activity in a
radical new network service for UK higher education.
The collections of digitised moving images and related textual resources are
mounted on servers for access by lecturers and students via a secure web
gateway, with moving images streamed to individual workstations, computer
labs and lecture rooms in the university. Of particular interest to film and
TV studies academics are the collections of resources on Hitchcock's
Blackmail (including substantial extracts from both the sound and silent
versions of the film for comparison, a BBC documentary and a number of
related textual resources) and a collection of archive British TV of the
1950s and 60s.
Technical architecture
Once cleared for copyright via the BFI, the moving image material was
transferred onto Beta SP for digitisation by the Manchester Visualisation
Centre at the University of Manchester. From there it was forwarded to the
client sites. At Glasgow we have concentrated on MPEG1 format, but we are
also trailing MPEG2 format for some selected content after consultation with
academics on the desirability of high quality pictures. We have focussed on
campus-wide delivery, comparing two methods of storing and managing data:
from the PADS SGI servers (using MediaBase and HyperWave) via fast ethernet
and ATM and from the SUN servers of our partners in the Revelation project
at the Department of Computing Science.
Using the collections
HyperWave, the PADS information gateway system enables users to employ a
number of searching strategies (from simple searches on full text content or
specific metadata attributes to more specialised filters) and to have
results displayed in different ways, including graphical representations of
the structure of the information. Users simply click on hyperlinks in the
search results to play the movies via the MediaBase player. If browsing,
again, there are a number of choices; we have found that users value the
opportunity for browsing, an opportunity often denied in digital library
environments. In browsing mode, users are given a subset of the Dublin Core
metadata attributes to help them make their choice (including a brief
description, date and link to related resources). They can also choose to
access the full descriptive metadata for each item.
User evaluations
We have carried out evaluations of the use of this material in contrasting
academic situations. For example, the Hitchcock materials have been used as
part of a junior undergraduate lecture series, with materials made available
to students to follow up in their own time in a student lab; we have also
evaluated how senior undergraduate students majoring in film and TV studies
use the material for personal research, and we have gathered data from
academic colleagues in other universities on the utility of this method of
delivery and its implications for teaching and scholarship. There is a
striking attitudinal difference between faculty and students: students
regard this innovative method of delivery with some nonchalance (this is no
more then they have come to expect from their increasingly digitally-based
study environment), meanwhile faculty, having experienced the difficulties
of locating and using moving image materials in traditional formats for
teaching or research, are much more forthcoming about the potential
benefits. Priority areas for further development work are better indexing
and easy-to-use tools to manipulate content; on the wider scale, rights
management needs to be addressed urgently and a strategy formulated for
digitisation and access priorities.
Conclusions
In comparison with traditional methods of access to moving image materials,
networked delivery has clear advantages, including ease of access for larger
numbers of users than is traditionally possible, and facilitation of access
to a wide range of supporting materials alongside the moving images. Also
some disciplines which have hitherto underused the rich variety of moving
image resources available might be encouraged to take better advantage of
them. However, although the technical setup necessary to achieve networked
delivery of large amounts of moving image data is no longer at the "cutting
edge" it is still unavailable to those without a fairly sophisticated
technical architecture. This, coupled with other obstacles such as the
thorny issue of rights management, make the future widespread availability
of this kind of service still uncertain. At the end of the project we
believe we will have demonstrated significant pedagogic benefit and a
practical technical setup with which to achieve it, as a useful contribution
to the debate about future directions.