3^rd Workshop: 27-29^th March 2003 in Berlin

Networking Multimedia Resources

There are now many different types of media in use, such as video, animation, audio, still images, etc. - both digitally-originated materials, and existing media resources which have been digitised - which digital libraries need to store and manage. The aim of the Berlin workshop is to explore which specific requirements and demands ought to be carefully weighed and considered before a digital media archive is made available via the Internet.

While traditional museums strive to become also digital museums, hosting virtual collections, plenty of new questions covering organisational as well as technical issues arise, such as copyright, collection policies, and open access demands.

In setting up subject gateways it makes sense to connect different media and information resources via standardised and interoperable network gateways that hide their technical specification from the users. Within this workshop we will discuss different approaches to network media repositories, libraries, archives and other information resources using the Open Archives Initiative technical framework for metadata harvesting.

The workshop will consist of both presentations given by invited speakers and small group breakout sessions where the participants can discuss key issues, such as:

• Metadata for multimedia-objects
• Demands for an Application profile for media archives
• University services in this field
• User needs/Usage conditions versus technical, legal, access issues
• Cross searching distributed Internet information resources
• Collaboration among different cultural heritage institutions / Multi-Institutional ventures

A tutorial on the implementation of OAI-PMH will be held the day before the workshop (on March 27^th) for those who are not familiar with this protocol. One of the workshop speakers will be a representative of the OAI who will provide an update of OAI activities.

The discussions and results of the Workshop will be summarised in a Workshop report that will be published on the OA-Forum website ( http://www.oaforum.org/documents/).

Who should attend

• People from media service institutions, museums, digitization projects and librarians who are considering making their repositories of information available via the Internet;
• technical, research and project managers who are interested in providing third party services for interoperable open archives and libraries;
• decision makers in the area of libraries, media centres and museums looking for new strategic opportunities to promote their organizations and working areas.

The workshop will take place in Berlin, at the Humboldt-University in the Centre of Berlin, Unter den Linden 6.