| MIDAS
- Moving Image Database for Access and Re-use of European film collections MIDAS 2008 The third year of MIDAS started on January 15, 2008. 2 new partners joined the consortium: Lithuanian Central State Archive
Third Year Objectives The second project year was dedicated to establishing the MIDAS system and www.filmarchives-online.eu as an essential point of reference for searching moving images in Europe. This has mainly been achieved through broadening the search system's source base. After sustainability planning and business model development have been initiated in MIDAS I and substantiated in MIDAS II, the third project year has implemented a model best suited for long-term sustainability after MEDIA funding has ended. Revenues were envisaged to be generated through abroad licensing fees as one source of income. A second source of income could be generated through adding new archives interested in joining the system: Adding new catalogues from other organisations has been turned into a fee-based service. A third column for sustaining MIDAS was intended to be context-relevant advertising on the filmarchives-online web site. Altogether, the statics of these three sustainability columns have been tested for their capability of serving as supporting pillars for the MIDAS architecture, enabling it to depart from project-status to regular activity. Continued efforts at disseminating the portal www.filmarchives-online.eu were made in the project's third year. These efforts became more effective as the collection information available had become more complete and encompassing by 2008. In combination with the portal's USP of being the sole provider of comprehensive film archival collection information across Europe, these dissemination efforts were a necessary condition for making MIDAS sustainable from 2009 on-wards, since any business model aiming at MIDAS long-term sustainability are dependent on the portal's widespread publicity and acceptance. Establishing links with projects and activities of the European digital library initiative i2010 also became a major activity of MIDAS III. By making the system compatible with the search and re-trieval functions of this emerging point of reference for European scientific and cultural content, MIDAS undertook to benefit from this unique opportunity of reaching a far wider target audience. Furthermore, the next logical step for MIDAS as a pilot project within the framework of the MEDIA Plus programme was to actually provide access to archival moving image content. In a media environment becoming more and more dependent on quick supply of digital moving image con-tent, film archives are increasingly often requested to deliver digitised films and footage. This has had - and continues to have - the effect of an increasing amount of former analogue-only moving images becoming digitally available. To date, this process takes place rather slowly. Apart from the orphan works issue, the main reason for this is that considerable investment in high-quality moving image digitisation is not yet economical due to the fact that instant web-based access to these moving image files is still lack-ing. The MIDAS project had already built the basic metadata infrastructure necessary for accessing archival moving images. The implementation has been made in a real-life environment with actual moving image material from the archives. It is provided to actual users interested in re-using content. But as the total number of films and hours of footage provided by the film archives in digital form is still relatively small, the content has only the critical mass for an implementation on a proof-of-concept basis. After common bibliographic and archival catalogue standards (MARC, DC) have been implemented by the end of the second project year, a third standard specifically for cinematic work description was implemented in MIDAS III. As the original plan of doing a test implementation of the Cinematographic Works Standard (CWS) within MIDAS II has been rendered unfeasible due to work plan changes of CEN/BT/TF/179 , this work had to be carried out in MIDAS III. Implementing CWS-based exchange formats for im- and export of metadata to and from MIDAS as early as possible can be mutually beneficial for both activities. MIDAS enabled to process data according to the CWS without considerable efforts necessary for format transformation in the future. This makes it an indispensable adaptation to the MIDAS system, in order to guarantee access of further archives to the common catalogue after the period of EU funding has ended. In exchange for that, valuable experience during the implementation and testing can be gained. These experiences could be shared with the CEN standardisation initiative. MIDAS not only has an import interface via CWS but also an export interface. This means that the project partners are able to supply CWS-compliant filmographic catalogue data almost instantly after implementation of the CWS-Export function from MIDAS. A task that has continued to be a major part of the project work will be to associate new archives with the MIDAS system. 2 new institutions from 2 countries will join the consortium. This means that by January 2009, the MIDAS system incorporated catalogue data of 18 institutions from 12 countries representing 11 languages. Furthermore, the partners already associated with MIDAS continued in their work of contributing further metadata to the common metadata repository. In doing so, MIDAS could further consolidate filmarchives-online's status as the central point of reference for non-fiction films and footage from European archives. With a third year of MEDIA support, effectiveness and pace of this necessary consolidation effort will be much higher compared to a third year of MIDAS without this support. The lower number of new partners compared to the project's second year is owed to the fact that the main goal of MIDAS III has been to consolidate the consortium. Making the system and the MIDAS organisation fit for operating without its current financial support has been of utmost importance, since MEDIA Plus funding definitively ceased after January 2009. Qualitative objectives - Implementing a business model based on the sustainability planning in MIDAS II, to be adapted for post-MEDIA-funding operability - Achieving a smooth transition from project status to regular everyday operation - Making filmarchives-online prominent as the central point of reference for searching and licensing films and footage from European archives through stepped-up dissemination ef-forts aiming at relevant user groups defined in the first phase of the project - Evaluation of procedures for integrating new members
into the consortium; if necessary: procedure optimisation - enabling the MIDAS metadata repository to further grow by associating new sources compliant to one of the standards implemented in MIDAS - Giving access to moving images available online on
a proof-of-concept basis
Quantitative objectives - Integration of 2 new partners (representing 2 different countries with 2 languages) into the MIDAS consortium, amounting to a total of 18 partners representing 12 countries with 11 languages in the MIDAS consortium - With these new partners, nearly 50 % of all members of Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) will be associated with MIDAS - The new partners will contribute in average approximately 1.000 metadata records each, amounting to 2.000 new film works accessible. The number of film prints of these works will be higher - The old partners will continue to contribute metadata records to the system, amounting to approximately 400 new works accessible per old partner - Including the 15.000 film works made accessible during the first and second years, this amounts to a total of at least 23.000 film works accessible via the MIDAS system - The number of individual film prints associated with these film works will be considerably higher. As measured by the prints-per-work relation in the MIDAS system to date (1,8 prints/work), this would amount to more than 41.000 film prints accessible - Providing access to on-line available moving images of at least 3 archives - Attendance to at least 2 European fairs, tradeshows
or festival events for dissemination of the portal
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| 26-Oct-2007 | ||