The New Media Center


  • A New Unit is Born
    The New Media Center is a brand-new-never-before unit located on the second floor of the new Library–it is the twenty-first century re-invented Audiovisual Center. New Media includes six viewing rooms, two rooms suitable for portable viewing, and about 110 computers equipped with an enormous range of software plus Internet access. Less than a year after its opening, the area is heavily used by both faculty and students.

    The year has been spent installing the high-functioning equipment acquired by the NMC; training the staff in both AV and computing skills; beginning the digitization of the collections; and creating the Artesia framework for delivering digital media on the campus.

  • Selecting a Multimedia Distribution System
    New Media Center staff will manage the Library's multimedia distribution system. To choose such a system (also known as a digital assets management system, or DAM), an interdepartmental committee made up of Library, AIT, and ITS staff interviewed firms that offer such systems. Artesia http://www.artesia.com (the only product capable of streaming rather than downloading, data to the desktop) was selected; the name of their product is TEAMS.

    Artesia is the Lamborghini of digital assets management systems. While it is used by high-powered corporations (AOL Time Warner; Daimler Chrysler; DreamWorks; Fox Entertainment; General Motors; HBO; Random House), as yet only a handful of nonprofits (The Getty) and educational institutions (Stanford; Brooklyn College) have elected to purchase and install this costly, sophisticated software. A great deal of effort will be required to train staff to use Artesia, design its screens, etc.: it is a gorgeous, complex system.

    On the Library side, AIT, Technical Services, and Special Collections staff are working hard with Artesia employees to define our metadata structure, design screens, etc. Staff have determined which metadata are to be selected for each format--metadata that must be extracted from the vast number of catalog records already in existence, and created for material not yet cataloged. While TEAMS does not accept the MARC format, it can work with Dublin Core, METS (Metadata Coding and Transmission Standard), and other standards. Stanford University, an Artesia customer with whom we have had numerous discussions, uses METS and has an entire unit dedicated to determining which metadata will be added to TEAMS. They have created a sixty-nine page document detailing the elements and sub-elements to be chosen for text and still images alone! As of now, they have not yet tackled the metadata for other formats, such as music and moving images.

    Given our Library's staffing realities, the challenges associated with Artesia implementation are many. The hardware is in, and in the summer 2003 two or three people will go to Maryland (Artesia headquarters) for further training.