As we discussed on the call today, I was trying to get a project off the
ground for the AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists:
http://www.amianet.org/) Preservation Committee (which I co-chair with
Reto Kromer) to  put together a survey to determine the various digital
products produced by our members for specific purposes. This is based on
a project I did for my day job at NARA to document the Products and
Services produced by my division:
http://www.archives.gov/preservation/products/. You'll notice that we
link to standards and specifications where appropriate (such as here:
http://www.archives.gov/preservation/products/products/aud-p1.html) but
what I find most useful about this resource is the "rationale section"
which details why we do what we do as well as the links to recent
projects which use this product.
 
We got as far as a template of likely data points (see below) but we
didn't get it much further than that. The committee chairs have decided
to shelve this idea for now because we couldn't get volunteers to help
out. There may be something useful in the small bit of work we did
accomplish. We had just planned to use Survey Monkey but I don't think
our data had the projected complexity of the NDSA work. AMIA was going
to host the results on its website. 
 
I also drafted a skeletal action plan but we didn't implement any of
it. The action plan follows at the end of the email. This may be what
Meg heard about in Estonia but that may be something else entirely. If
this isn't it, I'd love to find out what project that was!
 
Best from Kate
 
 
 
Suggested Survey Points:
 
Preservation Committee Digital Product Survey - DRAFT

1. Institution name: (required field)
2. Institution website: (required field)
3. Contact name: (required field)
4. Contact email or phone (required field)
5. Motion Picture Film
5.1. Does your institution reformat motion picture film to a file-based
object? Yes/no (Required field. If no, can skip to video section)
5.2 Briefly describe your motion picture film holdings including number
of reels/titles and formats. (If this information is available online,
you can just provide a link)
5.3. What is the approximate file volume to date?
5.4. Preservation master specifications. (If this information is
available online, you can just provide a link)
5.4.1. What file formats and codecs do you use for your preservation
master or highest quality capture? What are the file attributes
associated with these (such as bit rate, resolution, color sampling,
profiles/levels, GOP structure, quantization rates, etc.)?
5.5. Digital Intermediate/Reproduction master specifications (If this
information is available online, you can just provide a link)
5.5.1. What file formats and codecs do you use for your digital
intermediate or reproduction master? What are the file attributes
associated with these (such as bit rate, resolution, color sampling,
profiles/levels, GOP structure, quantization rates, etc.)?
5.6. Distribution/Access copy specifications (If this information is
available online, you can just provide a link)
5.6.1. What file formats and codecs do you use for your distribution or
access copies? What are the file attributes associated with these (such
as bit rate, resolution, color sampling, profiles/levels, GOP structure,
quantization rates, etc.)?
6. What equipment do you use for the capture? (For example, 2K or 4K
film scanner, production quality film scanner, etc)
7. How long have you been using these capture specifications? Have you
experienced any problems?
8. Video
8.1. Does your institution reformat SD or HD video to a file-based
object? Yes/no (Required feild. If no, can skip to Storage section)
8.2 Briefly describe your video holdings including number of titles and
formats. (If this information is available online, you can just provide
a link)
8.3. What is the approximate file volume to date?
8.4. Preservation master specifications (If this information is
available online, you can
 just provide a link)(This field could repeat
for SD and HD options)
8.4.1. What file formats and codecs do you use for your preservation
master or highest quality capture? What are the file attributes
associated with these (such as bit rate, resolution, color sampling,
profiles/levels, GOP structure, quantization rates, etc.)?
8.5. Digital Intermediate/Reproduction master specifications (If this
information is available online, you can just provide a link)(This field
could repeat for SD and HD options)
8.5.1. What file formats and codecs do you use for your digital
intermediate or reproduction master? What are the file attributes
associated with these (such as bit rate, resolution, color sampling,
profiles/levels, GOP structure, quantization rates, etc.)?
8.6. Distribution/Access copy specifications (If this information is
available online, you can just provide a link)(This field could repeat
for SD and HD options)
8.6.1. What file formats and codecs do you use for your distribution or
access copies? What are the file attributes associated with these (such
as bit rate, resolution, color sampling, profiles/levels, GOP structure,
quantization rates, etc.)?
9. What equipment do you use for the capture? (For example, SAMMA
system, stand alone video editing station and related software, etc)
10. How long have you been using these capture specifications? Have you
experienced any problems?
11. Storage and File Management
11.1. Briefly describe your digital storage environment, such as local
storage only, NAS/SAN, LTO, etc.(Required field)
11.2 Briefly describe your Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. If
you do not currently use a DAM system, please note that in this field.
(Required field)
12. Notes (Is there something we haven’t asked that you’d like to
mention?):
Action Plan
(this is just copied from our AMIA PC Basecamp site)
What do we think about using Survey Monkey to collect the data? The
AMIA office has a license that we can use. I think we’ll be ok for the
types of data we are looking to collect. We don’t have repeatable fields
per se. I think we could structure the survey instrument to be mostly
free text or drop downs. Survey Monkey will let you export into a
variety of formats.
Next steps for us:
- Send out to PC for comments
- Develop Survey Timeline
- Develop communication plan including “Announcement” text to introduce
this project to the people we want to fill this information in
- Set up Survey Monkey instrument. Launch and monitor data collection
- Compile final data into some sort of presentation form (nothing fancy
I think * just a spreadsheet or something)
- Work with AMIA office to get this information posted on AMAInet.net
- Probably lots of other stuff I haven’t even considered yet.
Obviously, the first things need to happen first. Any takers on
specific tasks?
 
 
 
 

 
 
**************
Kate Murray
Digitization Process Development Specialist
Digitization Services (IDS)
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
301-837-2924
[log in to unmask]
 
 



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