ppMultimedia Metadata Standards

Metadata is an important aspect of the creation and management of digital images (and other
multimedia files). Metadata standards for digital imaging can include information about:

the technical format of the image file

the process by which the image was created

the content of the image

Following these standards helps museums to consistently record information about their
images in a way that facilitates retrieval and sharing in a networked environment. There are
three main types of metadata used for digital images:

"Descriptive or Content metadata" is information about the object captured in the image
- the object's name, title, materials, dates, physical description, etc. Content metadata is
very important, as it is the main way that people will search and retrieve the images from
a database. Many museums have information about the objects in their collections
recorded in their collections management system; these collections management records
can form part of the image management system. There are standards available to assist in
determining what information should be recorded about the object, and how to record it.

"Technical metadata" is also essential to properly manage digital images. Technical

metadata is data about the image itself (not about the object in the image). It includes
information about:
o

the technical processes used in image capture or manipulation

colour

file formats, etc.

Some of the technical information that is recorded about the image, such as the image file
type, must be machine-readable (following specific technical formats) in order for a computer
system to be able to properly display the image.

"Administrative metadata" includes information related to the management of the image

(such as rights management).

The following standards and guidelines have been developed to assist with the management
of multimedia files:

JPEG2000

Synchronized Multimedia Implementation Language (SMIL)

NISO Z39.87-2006 - Data Dictionary - Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images

DIG35 Specification

MPEG-7

Video Development Initiative (ViDe) UVideo Development Initiative (ViDe) User's

Guide: Dublin Core Application Profile for Digital Video

Guidelines for Handling Image Metadata

US Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative: Standards

Metadata Standards for Digital Preservation

In order to ensure longevity for the web sites, digital images, databases, and electronic
documents created by museums, it is important that museums develop preservation strategies
for this digital material. Preservation metadata should be a key component of a museum's
strategy to preserve digital information. Preservation metadata includes information about the
date the digital file was created, the file format, how the file was created, relationship to other
files, etc.
There are several important standards for digital preservation:

Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS)

The Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS)

PREMIS (PREservation Metadata) Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, v. 2

(March 2008)

Intellectual Property Rights Metadata Standards

As information technology is increasingly used to create, manage, use, and deliver intellectual
content, standards are needed to describe and facilitate these transactions. The following
standards can support the management of intellectual property rights for digital content:

Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS)

ISO21000/MPEG-21

CreativeCommons Rights Expression Language (ccREL)

METSRights

Interoperability of Data for Electronic Commerce Systems (INDECS)

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Plan for effective multimedia management

Best Practice:
Multimedia data present unique challenges for data discovery, accessibility, and metadata
formatting and should be thoughtfully managed. Researchers should establish their own
requirements for management of multimedia during and after a research project using the
following guidelines. Multimedia data includes still images, moving images, and sound. The
Library of Congress has a set of web pages discussing many of the issues to be considered
when creating and working with multimedia data. Researchers should consider quality,
functionality and formats for multimedia data. Transcriptions and captioning are particularly
important for improving discovery and accessibility.
Storage of images solely on local hard drives or servers is not recommended. Unaltered
images should be preserved at the highest resolution possible. Store original images in
separate locations to limit the chance of overwriting and losing the original image.
Ensure that the policies of the multimedia repository are consistent with your general data
management plan.
There are a number of options for metadata for multimedia data, with many MPEG standards
(http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/), and other standards such as PBCore (http://pbcore.org/).
The following web pages have sections describing considerations for quality and
functionality and formats for each of still images, sound (audio) and moving images (video).
Sustainability of Digital Formats Planning for Library of Congress Collections:

Still Images
Sound
Moving Images
Online, generic multimedia repositories and tools (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Picasa)

are low-cost (can be free)

are open to all
may provide community commenting and tagging
some provide support for explicit licenses and re-use
provide some options for valuable metadata such as geolocation

potential for large-scale dissemination

optimize usability and low barrier for participation
rely on commercial business models for sustainability
may have limits on file size or resolution
may have unclear access, backup, and reliability policies, so ensure you are aware of
them before you rely upon them
Specialized multimedia repositories (e.g. MorphBank, LIFE)

provide domain-specific metadata fields and controlled vocabularies customized for

expert users
are highly discoverable for those in the same domain
can provide assistance in curating metadata
optimize scientific use cases such as vouchering, image analysis
rely on research or institutional/federal funding
may require high-quality multimedia, completeness of metadata, or restrict
manipulation
may not be open to all
may provide APIs for sharing or re-use for other projects
are recognized as high-quality, scientific repositories
may migrate multimedia to new formats (e.g. analog to digital)
may have restrictions on bandwidth usage
Some institutions or projects maintain digital asset management systems, content
management systems, or other collections management software (e.g. Specify, KE Emu)
which can manage multimedia along with other kinds of data

projects or institutions should provide assistance

may be mandated by institution
may be more convenient, e.g. when multiple data types result from a project
may not be optimized for discovery, access, or re-use
usually not domain-specific
may or may not be suitable for long-term preservation
Description Rationale:
Multimedia metadata is particularly important for discovery as the objects do not contain
text that can be indexed.
Related Best Practices:
Create, manage, and document your data storage system
Define expected data outcomes and types
Define roles and assign responsibilities for data management
Additional Information:

"Multimedia Semantics - The Role of Metadata":

What to Include in an Historical Archive

Given that a limited number of items will be included in a digital historical
archive, criteria need to be established for determining what is included in a
particular archive project. Different criteria are appropriate for different
projects. Several factors are usually considered and priority is given to items
that are high on most or all of the factors. The factors that are usually
considered include:

Purpose. An item must have value for the purpose of the archive. The
purpose of the archive could be specific, such as information about a
particular person, or more general, such as information about an
extended family or a geographic region.

Uniqueness. An item that contains unique historical information will be

considered favorably for inclusion in an archive. On the other hand, an
item that is very similar to another item in the archive will be considered
less favorably.

Quality. An item that is in good condition and high quality will be

considered favorably. An item of poor quality, such as a photograph that
is out of focus or that has irretrievable damage to basic content, will be
considered unfavorably.

Documentation. An item with good information for documentation will be

considered favorably. Items with little or no information for
documentation will be considered less favorably.

Legal Rights. Items with clear legal rights will be considered favorably.
Items that have legal risks will be considered unfavorably.

Privacy. An item that is suitable for public display and distribution will be
considered favorably. An item of a more person nature that may be
inappropriate for public dissemination would be considered unfavorably.

pThe Goals of Digital Archiving#

The overall goals of digital archiving are simple:

 Permit easy and wide access to digital archaeological data for

cultural, educational, and scientific purposes.
Ensure the long-term preservation of digital data so that it
remains accessible for appropriate uses in the future.
The Principles of Archiving Digital Data#

The points below present an outline of the key issues to be considered when creating a
digital archive.
Ensure that existing digital data are safeguarded and deposited
in an appropriate digital archive.
When creating a new digital archive, ensure that it conforms to
existing standards and guidelines on how data should be
structured, preserved and accessed.
All digital archives should ideally be deposited in a digital
archiving facility or collections repository where they can be
properly accessed, curated, and maintained for the future.
The key to successful digital archiving is thorough
documentation of the data, how they were collected, what
standards were used to describe them and how they have been
managed since collection.
If there are concerns that some data (e.g., specific site location
information) needs to be kept confidential (as required by the
Archaeological Resource Protection Act (ARPA) in the US), a
means of easily separating these data from non-confidential
data must be developed for reports, analytical datasets, and
for displaying site locations on maps. It is also essential that
this process is documented and deposited as part of the
archive.
There is generally no need to preserve interim versions of final
digital files. Exceptions to this include interim datasets where
either data or text is subsequently discarded or decimated to
final publication. These issues are discussed in the later section
on Preservation Intervention Points.

 Data already held safely in paper archives do not need to be

digitised, except to provide a digital security copy or online
access to the data. When digitising or scanning from paper
records, do not automatically discard the paper originals when
complete. Offer them to relevant documentary archives.
Although the digital, paper and archaeological resource
archives may be dispersed, the integrity of the complete
archive must be ensured by cross-referencing between
physical collections and digital records.
In accordance with the principles presented above, digital archives should at least
provide an index to archaeological sites, finds and paper archives and at best provide
access to digital records of data, material, documentation, interpretation and analyses.
It is recommended that the collection or creation of digital datasets be planned at the
outset of a project and incorporated into project scopes of work and specifications. It
is recognised that funding agencies must acknowledge such requirements if
widespread implementation is ever to be achieved.
Two examples, one from the UK and another from the US, illustrate potential
problems when planning for a digital archive is not incorporated as part of project
planning and execution.
The Newham Archive: A Case Study of the Loss of Digital Data#

This problem has been effectively demonstrated through work to rescue the contents
of the Newham Museum Archaeological Service digital archive . The Archaeological
Service was closed down in 1998 and, although its physical collections are still
curated by the London boroughs of Newham, Redbridge and Waltham Forest, the
digital archive was passed to the ADS. The digital archive represented all the work
that was digitised during Newham Archaeological Service fieldwork and postexcavation analysis, along with project designs over a period of about ten years. This
archive was delivered to the ADS on 230 floppy disks containing over 6000 files and
totalling over 130Mb of data. Much of the data was held in archaic formats or in
proprietary software and significant time and effort were required to rescue these files.
Unfortunately around 10-15% of the files are still inaccessible and the data that they
contain are effectively lost. An additional problem was that the archive was
inadequately documented and it was often difficult to reconstruct which files belonged

to each project. As a result, there are a number of orphaned datasets, including a

large cemetery database, which have been rescued but have little reuse potential.
The Newham Museum Archaeological Service digital archive had two main problems:
1. Data held in non-preservation file formats, i.e. proprietary file
formats that have gone out of use;
2. Non-existent data or project documentation.
The Newham digital archive is probably typical of the digital information resources of
archaeological units. There are many archaeology units with archives of files in
redundant formats, without explicit information relating them to sites, containing
unexplained coding and in unknown states of completion (cf. Condron et al. 1999).
These files may also be stored on unsuitable media in poor physical storage
conditions. In short, there may be large amounts of archived archaeological
information that can never be accessed again.
The Newham Museum Service digital archive is a depressing and salutary tale. It
developed as a working tool to help the Service write up and manage its
archaeological projects, and in this respect, the archive was fit for its original purpose.
The concept of digital project archiving was still in its infancy when the Newham
archive developed. As there were no published strategies or methodologies to ensure
the effective preservation of digital data at the time, the poor condition of the Newham
archive is understandable.
Soil Systems, Inc.: A Study in Data Recovery#

Soil Systems, Inc. (SSI) was a cultural resource management firm that conducted
archaeological projects throughout the American Southwest for more than twenty
years. Based in Phoenix, AZ, the firm concentrated its work in the state of Arizona
and completed a number of very large archaeological compliance projects in the
Phoenix metropolitan area. The firm was perhaps most widely known for its extensive
and thorough excavations at Pueblo Grande, one of the largest and most influential
Hohokam sites in the Phoenix Basin. SSIs work at Pueblo Grande spanned at least
five separate testing and/or data recovery projects that took place over the course of
more than a decade. The firms efforts resulted in an impressive set of data that covers
most of the known extent of Pueblo Grande. This dataset alone may rival, in extent
and in detail, any other data collection from a single site in the American Southwest.

Unfortunately, SSI closed in 2008, a victim of the worldwide financial crisis that
began that year. Most of SSIs physical collections and records (i.e. field notes, paper
data records, and artifacts) were curated either at the Arizona State Museum,
University of Arizona or at Pueblo Grade Museum, Phoenix, AZ. When digital data
were created, some of the finalized data tables were converted to text formats and
passed to the Arizona State Museum or Pueblo Grande Museum along with physical
records and artifact collections. However, the majority of SSIs digital data and
records that document the archaeological projects they completed in Arizona, New
Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada remained in proprietary formats on local hard
drives and servers. In addition, nearly all of the digital data associated with several
large projects that SSI was completing at its closure were not passed to state or
municipal repositories.
SSIs digital data for most of its archaeological projects were stored in Advanced
Revelations (AREV) version 3.1, an early relational database platform. Provenience
and artifact analysis data for more than 50 separate projects, including several Pueblo
Grande projects, were held in AREV file formats. Spatial data were stored in other
formats on SSIs server and on individual, local hard drives. Since SSI produced most
of their site maps and report figures in AutoCad, vast quantities of spatial data were
stored in now-outdated AutoCad file formats. Finally, individual analyses, integrated
data tables, draft reports, and final reports were stored in multiple file formats on the
company server.
Thus, at SSIs closure, digital data for at least a hundred archaeological projects and
the extensive, yet still un-integrated, Pueblo Grande dataset were threatened with
increasing chances of loss. The knowledge and software required to interface with
AREV formats and to export the data grew more and more scarce with the passing of
time. In addition, the hardware on which the data were stored, which was capable of
running the original software programs, was growing older and more obsolete.
A grant project sponsored by Digital Antiquity is currently attempting to rescue the
digital data associated with several large SSI projects at Pueblo Grande. Project
participants have interfaced SSIs server and hard drives with current computing
hardware and extracted all of SSIs digitally stored data. In addition, they have booted
the AREV database program in a Windows 7 environment and re-learned how to work
with AREV to extract data tables from its relational datasets. They are migrating all of
the recovered data to more stable formats and creating multiple copies to ensure the

long-term preservation of the archaeological data SSI created. Moreover, the project
will integrate large portions of the Pueblo Grande dataset and curate the originals with
the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR).
The Soil Systems, Inc. digital data collection faced three primary threats that may
have led to data loss:
1. Data stored in non-preservation file formats, i.e. proprietary file
formats that are no longer commonly used;
2. Large amounts of digitized and digital-born data stored
locally, on internal servers and internal hard drives;
3. Lack of resources to migrate large amounts of digital data to a
curation facility/repository capable of adequately storing these
data.
The problems that threatened SSIs digital data collection highlight critical issues that
are common to CRM and other private firm digital data archives. In most instances,
private firm archaeological data are entered into, created by, and stored in widely
available commercial software. At present, these data are frequently born in digital
environments, and are growing increasingly complex as firms have access to ever
more sophisticated and powerful software packages. Although data are often backed
up on servers and stored as multiple copies, they are infrequently converted to
preservation-minded formats (i.e. exported from proprietary formats and into more
stable, persistent formats). Second, private firm digital data are stored primarily on the
hardware purchased and owned by the firm. A firm may provide copies of finalized
digital datasets to an agency or repository along with its final project report for
individual projects. However, these datasets likely represent only a subset of the
digital data actually created during the completion of an archaeological project. In
addition, the submitted digital data are often divorced from the project and site
metadata when placed in a repository facility. Finally, many private firms lack
available resources to independently undertake large-scale digital curation efforts on a
long-term basis. In particular, these firms have almost no resources at their disposal
for digital data conversion and migration when they close their businesses. Their data
are then under immediate threat of obsolescence and loss.

The Newham Museum Service and Soil Systems, Inc. case studies describe common
problems with aspects of current digital archaeological archiving practices. These
Guides have been developed to provide better preservation strategies for
archaeological project data that will enable individuals and organizations to avoid
problems and create useful and easily-preserved digital data. One clear step toward
improving archaeological practice in this area is recognition that the road to long-term
preservation begins not at the end of a project but at its inception.

'What is Digital Archiving?' Edited by Kieron Niven with contributions by Mason

Scott Thompson
Archaeology Data Service / Digital Antiquity (2011) Guides to Good Practic