Report of the SC-03-06 Working Group on Digital Library and Archive Systems, of the SC-03 Subcommittee on Preservation and Restoration of Audio held in New York, NY., US., 2003-10-10.
The meeting was convened by chair D. Ackerman.
The agenda and the report of the previous meeting, held in Amsterdam 2003-05, were approved as written.
Open Projects
AES-X098: Review of Audio Metadata
The work of the working group on this project has three parts, one dealing with descriptive metadata and the other two with administrative metadata
Descriptive metadata document: This document is now in PWD stage, and has been sent to the Secretariat to be formatted. The Secretariat will complete formatting by 2003-12. It will then be distributed to the working group as a PWD.
Administrative metadata: Two task group drafts were presented by Ackerman, one titled "Process History," and the other titled "Core Audio." With regard to the Process History document, a number of changes included in this draft were discussed. These include the following.
A sense of a timeline now is included. It is inherited from the primary audio object.
Off-line batch events now are accommodated.
All patching information now is in one place, and the previous double-linked list has been abandoned.
A second schema (sec. 7.1) has been introduced to allow for templating devises and modules.
Section 4 is new.
It was further noted that Harvard University currently is working on a pilot application of the process audio section. When successful, the application will be made available publicly and free of charge.
Further refinements will be made and the draft will distributed to the working group for comment by 2003-12. With response to comments, the document will be sent to the Secretariat early in 2004 for formatting.
Regarding the Core Audio document, the definition of an audio document has been refined to be the audio essence of the document. Also, some elements have been renamed to achieve greater clarity. Further refinements will be made and the draft with be distributed to the working group for comment by 2003-12. With response to comments, the document will be sent to the Secretariat early in 2004 for formatting.
An approach to the SMPTE Material Exchange Format (MXF) specification was discussed.
Liaisons
AES-X120 : Liaison with International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)
Project scope: None available
Assigned to: SC-03-06, Status: Continuing
Intent: Liaison, Initiated: 2003-01, Target: Continuing
Current goal: Status report, Goal date: Continuing
T. Sheldon reported that the IASA Board of Directors and its current President have not approved the liaison relationship yet, despite the letter received to that effect from the previous IASA President more than a year ago. The IASA Technical Committee and Board of Directors discussed the liaison with AES in Spetember 2003. While no word has been received, there is every reason to believe that it will be approved soon.
New Projects
Ackerman asked if it would be valuable to draw up a document discussing problems and issues associated with analog-to-digital transfer of audio recordings. The project had previously been proposed, but never realized. This proposal was received positively and work will follow on the completion of the administrative metadata documents. It is anticipated that this project would yield an information document.
New Business
It was noted that the AES 25th International Conference will take place in London on 14-19 June 2004 on the topic of "Metadata for Audio."
The next meeting will be in conjunction with the AES 116th convention in Berlin, Germany, 2004-05.
