Best Practices Resources

Audio

Recording information and resources for analog, digital, home demo, sound software, studios and other settings.

The basics on setting up an audio workstation from WebMonkey.

The site looks at the process of importing, editing and exporting, as well as software and hardware solutions for editing digital audio on PC and Macintosh platforms. See this multimedia tutorial with more information

Imaging

Dig35 - Focus on defining metadata standards.

DCMI - Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. An open forum to develop the Dublin core metadata standards.

EAD - Encoded Archival Description.

METS - A standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using XML.

NISO - National Information Standards Organization. NISO Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images Standards Committee: an XML schema for a set of technical data elements required to manage digital image collections. The schema provides a format for interchange and/or storage of the data specified in the NISO Draft Standard Data Dictionary: Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images (Version 1.2).

OAI - Open Archives Initiative.

PADI - Preserving Access to Digital Information. A subject gateway to digital preservation resources.

The Harvard University Library specification for their Digital Repository.

An overview of metadata and tagging digital images.

The Adobe XMP standard, which is available as an open-source license, and is integrated into Adobe Photoshop etc.

University of Minnesota Libraries IMAGES (Image Metadata Aggregation for Enhanced Searching) digital library module, a metadata aggregator for digital visual resources both within the Libraries and for units across campus. The page includes the XML DTD.

A links page for metadata standards, crosswalks, and standard organizations.

A 1999 paper by Michael Day entitled "Metadata for images: emerging practice and standards". Abstract: The effective organization and retrieval of digital images in a networked environment will depend upon the development and use of relevant metadata standards. This paper will discuss metadata formats and digital images with particular reference to the Dublin Core initiative and the standard developed by the Consortium for the Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI). Issues relating to interoperability, the management of resources and digital preservation will be discussed with reference to a number of existing projects and initiatives.

METAe is not a research project on digital preservation itself. The contribution of METAe to the area of digital preservation will be indirect: The project will ease the automated creation of (technical, descriptive, and structural) metadata during the image capturing and digitization process. In other words: METAe will integrate metadata capturing into application software and it will pick-up recent developments and emerging standards in order to make the output highly compatible to existing digital library systems.

A links page for metadata resources.

Multimedia and SMIL Links

• Synchronised Multimedia (w3c): The recommended reference for SMIL standards and resources.
• Streaming Media World: Applications and articles about the SMIL standard.
• SMIL Links: National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands.
• SMIL tutorial from the non-profit HELIO organization.
• HotWired: Multimedia presentation authoring tutorial.
• Colorado Digitisation Program: Recommended reference for best practices for digital audio.
• Streaming Media Tutorial: Easy-to-understand explanation of streaming media and tutorial using RealPlayer.
• Best Practice: Teaching American Studies: A collection of sites exhibiting good use of digital technology.
• Humbul Humanities Hub: Catalogue of humanities resources on-line.
• SMIL Tutorial (Boston University): Creating audio/video using the SMIL standard.
• SMIL Tutorial (xml.com): How SMIL is used to produce images using overlays.