The PBCore Saga: An Update
Those of us consumed with passion about metadata for A/V objects (and who isn’t…) have been excited by the emergence of the PBCore. We present here an update.
In our last dramatic PBCore episode, CPB funded a multi-year project to develop a standard for shareable metadata about audio and video productions and files. This culminated in the release of the PBCore Data Dictionary and an associated XML schema, with Version 1.0 in April 2005, and an improved Version 1.1 in January 2007.
We’ll leave an actual description of PBCore for another time and place, or get full details on the PBCore site.
It turns out PBCore is darn useful. Film archives, academic media collections, and media curators including the Library of Congress are actively pursuing systems that speak PBCore. Not to mention PBS, NPR, and a growing number of local stations. At recent AMIA conferences PBCore has been a central topic. PBCore has become relevant and possibly important to all moving image archivists, because it fills a black hole in the metadata universe concerning digital media.
Color us surprised when the initial CPB project to develop and support PBCore ran out of money last August. Forthwith, the principle developers at WGBH and elsewhere proposed a second phase, to establish a PBCore change-management process, plus funding to maintain the website, workshops, and other support activities. So far the response from CPB has been PBCore who?
What’s at stake? Considerable time and intellectual effort to develop a really good standard for A/V metadata, something everyone in the moving image community needs. Plus a certain (large) degree of credibility, because CPB was leading the PBCore effort and now we’re in some danger of abandoning PBCore. Like we somehow just forgot about it. With this project, Public Broadcasting has been a hero to the librarians and archivists, but it looks like we’re dropping the ball just when everyone wants to play.
So let’s some of us carry the PBCore torch for the next bit while pushing for further CPB action. We might have to get a bit militant. When someone ticks off the librarians, you don’t want to see what happens. Or maybe you do…
Jack Brighton
WILL Public Media