ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting: Digital Media Discussion Group Lowdown

ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting - American Library Association - Library Journal

By Raya Kuzyk -- Library Journal, 01/17/2010

• Interest in streaming media drives discussion
• Call for unique collection development strategies
• Prediction of more flexible licensing models 

On Saturday, January 16, more than 25 ALA Midwinter Meeting attendees convened at Boston’s Seaport Hotel for the Video Round Table-sponsored Digital Media Discussion Group, now in its fourth year. Most were academic librarians, though a handful of public librarians, special librarians, and filmmakers also attended, as did representatives from Alexander Street Press, Films Media Group, Swank Motion Pictures, and BBC Audiobooks America.

Participants’ reasons for attending ranged from a desire to create their own digital content that would live in their digital depositories to hope for clarity regarding licensing issues to curiosity about technologies and services others are using. Most were already substantially immersed in downloadable offerings and were either considering venturing into streaming media or looking to expand beyond the streaming media they currently make available to patrons.

The discussion’s primary focus was streaming media, though a couple of participants argued that, owing to bandwidth limitations and the preponderance of mobile technology, the downloadable format isn’t going away soon. Subjects explored at length included licensing issues, delivery options, digital encoding formats and parameters, and storage solutions.

Technology is the easy part
“In my experience,” said one academic librarian, “the technology is the easy part…the hard part is the legal issues, something our library is really struggling with right now”—specifically, he said, streaming full-length videos not in the public domain and questions of fair use when streaming smaller video segments.

His next largest concern, shared by others, regarded the logistics of managing the digital content.

Whose domain is it, anyway?
Some attendees were looking for ways their IT departments could better partner with the library to support the use and creation of digital media across all disciplines; others felt unsure in whose realm the responsibility should predominantly lie.

“I feel like we’re walking the line between the library wanting to be the place for this media and also having to take on the overwhelming cost and the responsibility of finding all the technical resources,” said one librarian.

When the discussion moved to the storage, management, re-use, and curation of digital content through cloud computing, NJVid (New Jersey Digital Video Repository) was broached as one successful such model. NJVid, a grant-funded, statewide digital video portal and repository, serves the state's educational institutions, libraries, museums, archives, and cultural centers.

Digital writing as scholarship
The group was generally appreciative of capabilities like video annotation that services from ASP, FMG, and Swank all offer but expressed frustration over the lack of any encoding standard.

Ideally, said ASP Chief Operating Officer Tim Lloyd, “you’d have an equivalent to XML [Extensible Markup Language] that’s a standard for video.” Such a standard, he said, would ensure the preservation of the “scholarship” of digital writing.

A nonviable licensing model
Another point of contention among attendees was that, in most cases, collection development policies for digital and physical media were one and the same, while they pose different challenges.

“I have all these vendor services, but I need to find justification for having a title and keeping it in perpetuity,” said one librarian. Another added that, “as soon as we get into anything with a reoccurring cost, it’s a serial, which means it has to be approved by a committee, it’s got a whole different budget.” This, she said, makes her more reticent to dabble when purchasing digital materials.

Alexander Street Press’s Lloyd agreed the current licensing model is problematic, saying that “we’re all stuck with a model for digital content that was originally only created with physical materials in mind.” But he predicted that, in three to five years, "we’re probably not going to be having this conversation,” as the economy and other factors "are going to force into existence more flexible models.”

Rethinking current practice
The Round Table gave attendees an opportunity to learn what others in their field were doing, ask questions, and voice their concerns and frustrations. And though no concrete solutions or best practices were proffered, virtually all agreed that the current approach to digital media, from its purchase to distribution, needs serious rethinking—even, perhaps, at its point of conception.

Expressing disbelief that distribution was not a subject taught at film schools, one filmmaker argued that “this is exactly when you should start thinking about distribution, because you should have your potential audience in mind before you even start to film.”

For questions about this Round Table or information on future Digital Media Discussion Groups, email Carleton L. Jackson at carleton@umd.edu.