MIDAS - Moving Image Database for Access and Re-use of European film collections

MIDAS 2007

The second year of MIDAS started on January 15, 2007. 11 new partners joined the consortium:

Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique

Tainiothiki tis Ellados

Slovenska Kinoteka

Deutsche Kinemathek

LICHTSPIEL-Kinemathek Bern

Fondazione Cineteca Italiana

Norsk filminstitutt

Nederlands Filmmuseum

IWF Knowledge and Media

Magyar Nemzeti Filmarchívum

La Cineteca del Friuli

Second Year Objectives

After the MIDAS system had been built and tested in the first project year, the second year of MIDAS brought new challenges. As the system did only include the databases of holdings of five film archives by the end of the first twelve months, further partners joined the MIDAS consortium in the second year. This brought the necessity of augmenting the MIDAS system and, for the new partners, of creating easy access to film holding metadata. Hence, the second year was dedicated to establishing the system as an essential point of reference for searching moving images in Europe by broadening the source base. From the archives' perspective, this meant an advanced and unprecedented opportunity to disseminate their film stocks.

Apart from integrating further holdings, this objective entailed challenges which are different from the work done in year one: dissemination of the project and its visible result, the moving image search portal www.filmarchives-online.eu. Increased efforts were made to build links to other multi-archival systems and Internet search systems by establishing the MIDAS system as a data provider. Furthermore, the success of the business models developed in the first year will be measured. As a result, a business model for sustainable operation and development of MIDAS has been implemented.

In addition to these new challenges, continued content indexing was necessary to refine the search functionality. Especially copyright information to be integrated in the federated database did require further editorial work. The old partners from the first year of MIDAS remained in the consortium, increasing their number of collections contributed.

A MIDAS system that incorporates a significant part of the European audiovisual archival community will also play an important role as a means of fostering standardisation efforts in the audiovisual-archival sector. As the ongoing standardisation work of CEN/BT/TF 179: Cinematographic Works has been followed closely, the MIDAS system can serve as a first practical application of the standards proposed. The CEN metadata standard will receive a headstart by being adopted by the MIDAS system. The most important precondition for achieving this goal was that a critical mass of institutions and of data has been made available via MIDAS.

Thus, after the technical feasibility had been explored and tested during the first year, the second year had been dedicated to a feasibility test of adding new partners to the consortium and integrating new data while the system was running. Routines for integrating a new consortium member had to be developed both in organisational and technical ways.

Close connections with other European initiatives in the audiovisual sector have been made. For example, for future digitisation activities, a single access point to a broad range of audiovisual material as supplied by MIDAS will make digitisation and online accessibility efforts more efficient. In the sector of moving image archives and holdings, MIDAS was the first networked system to provide the necessary information on the level of film works and single carrier items (film copies).

The business model which had been proposed in the first project year will be tested. Eventual necessities of changing or refining the proposed business model will be identified and implemented.

The objectives could be summarised in the following qualitative and quantitative terms:

Qualitative Objectives

Further content indexing by the partners
Development of MIDAS consortium organisational policies and procedures
Proof of concept for the feasibility of extending the system by new partners
Development of procedures for integrating new members into the consortium
Establishing the MIDAS metadata format as a commonly used format for moving image archives and holdings in Europe, providing the ongoing CEN standardisation activities with the opportunity of practically implementing new standards
Continued business model testing and refinement
Official launch event at a major European film festival
Dissemination of the MIDAS portal www.filmarchives-online.eu among stakeholders from the European audiovisual community (TV, documentary film producers, cultural and commercial stakeholders)
Enhancing the multilingual capabilities of the system
Evaluating the effect of MIDAS on the demand for film prints represented in the system and assessing the impact on archives' efficiency and effectiveness

Quantitative Objectives

Integration of 11 new partners (representing 9 different countries with 8 languages) into the MIDAS consortium, amounting to a total of 16 partners representing 11 countries with 10 languages in the MIDAS consortium
With these new partners, more than 40 % of all members of Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) will be associated with MIDAS
The new partners will contribute in average approximately 800 metadata records each, amounting in more than 9.000 new film prints accessible. The comparatively lower figure is due to the fact that some smaller archives are among the new partners
The old partners will continue to contribute metadata records to the system, amounting to at least 1.000 new works accessible per old partner
Including the 5.000 film prints contributed during the first year, this amounts to a total of at least 19.000 film prints from approximately more than 15.000 filmographic works accessible via the MIDAS system
Establishing MIDAS as a data provider and associate the MIDAS server with at least 3 other search engines or multi-archival systems
Attendance to at least 2 European fairs, tradeshows or festival events for dissemination of the portal

Due to the fact that already nearly half of all associated ACE members had joined MIDAS during the second project year, the necessary critical mass for achieving the project's qualitative goals had been met already during project implementation. Hence, a promising groundwork has been laid for achieving the original goal of associating 80 % of all European moving image archives within the first three year after project implementation.

26-Oct-2006