Video Libraries 101

October 27, 2008 9:08 AM

Can you point me towards some articles about planning and methodology for developing small video libraries?

I am freelancing as a video editor for a non-profit organization. They have here a collection of many hundred hours miniDV, BetaSP, CDs & DVDs containing raw footage, finished projects, and miscellaneous media. Some of this material could be harvested for future projects; however, there is no catalog of what is here and worse, many of the tapes are poorly labeled.

I would like to make the case for a total overhaul of the video collection in order to evaluate what is in the collection and make it accessible. I would also like to set up standards for labeling tapes and ingesting new material into this hypothetical catalog.

I have recently received an M.L.S., but I don't have any experience executing this kind of thing. What I would like to find are articles and case studies that outline a methodology for developing a small video library; how to evaluate how much time it will take to do it; and how to make a convincing proposal. I am not looking to create an online catalog or anything fancy.

posted by sswiller to science & nature (2 comments total)

The open video project, open video toolkit, and the academic work of its (LIS!) creators might be good place to start if you're planning to put it all online.
posted by activitystory at 10:35 AM on October 27, 2008

A good database is probably the most important piece as it will become the backbone that ties everything together. This should also give you a unique identifier id for each piece of media. After that you can minimally just label each media with a barcode, and buy a cheap scanner. Then really all you need is some front end tools to lookup media to input+display information and/or print more detailed labels and you're off and running.
posted by xorry at 12:51 PM on October 27, 2008