An examination of automatic video retrieval technology on access to the contents of an historical video archive

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an initial understanding of the constraints that historical video collections pose to video retrieval technology and the potential that online access offers to both archive and users. Design/methodology/approach – A small and unique collection of videos on customs and folklore was used as a case study. Multiple methods were employed to investigate the effectiveness of technology and the modality of user access. Automatic keyframe extraction was tested on the visual content while the audio stream was used for automatic classification of speech and music clips. The user access (search vs browse) was assessed in a controlled user evaluation. A focus group and a survey provided insight on the actual use of the analogue archive. The results of these multiple studies were then compared and integrated (triangulation). Findings – The amateur material challenged automatic techniques for video and audio indexing, thus suggesting that the technology must be tested against the material before deciding on a digitisation strategy. Two user interaction modalities, browsing vs searching, were tested in a user evaluation. Results show users preferred searching, but browsing becomes essential when the search engine fails in matching query and indexed words. Browsing was also valued for serendipitous discovery; however the organisation of the archive was judged cryptic and therefore of limited use. This indicates that the categorisation of an online archive should be thought of in terms of users who might not understand the current classification. The focus group and the survey showed clearly the advantage of online access even when the quality of the video surrogate is poor. The evidence gathered suggests that the creation of a digital version of a video archive requires a rethinking of the collection in terms of the new medium: a new archive should be specially designed to exploit the potential that the digital medium offers. Similarly, users' needs have to be considered before designing the digital library interface, as needs are likely to be different from those imagined. Originality/value – This paper is the first attempt to understand the advantages offered and limitations held by video retrieval technology for small video archives like those often found in special collections

Increasing Cultural Participation: An Audience Development Planning Handbook for Presenters, Producers and Their Collaborators

Looks at how people-centered strategies for building public participation in high-quality arts programs can help institutions of varied disciplines and sizes to diversify, broaden, and deepen relationships with their communities

2007 Scholar\u27s Day Program

Scholars\u27 Day was established in 1997 and is a day-long conference devoted to showcasing the wide array of scholarship, research and creative activities occurring on campus. In 2012, a new emphasis on student research lead to a name change to Transformations: A Student Research and Creativity Conference. This event focuses on student research, which is defined as an original investigation or creative activity through the primary efforts of a student or group of students. The work should show problem-solving skills and demonstrate new conceptual outcomes.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/transformationsprograms/1017/thumbnail.jp

Ethnomusicology Matters:Influencing Social and Political Realities

This book gathers international voices from the field of ethnomusicology discussing the socio-political relevance of the discipline. The articles draw from contemporary discourses that take into account the role of music and dance in shaping social and political realities. An important field connected to political relevance is heritage, either in connection with the UNESCO or with archives. Ontologies of indigenous groups and their relevance in knowledge production is discussed in ethnomusicology nowadays as well as the possibilities of decolonising the discipline. Two articles from ethno-choreology explore dance from the gender perspective and in the post-socialist political structures. Different approaches from applied ethnomusicology deal with social justice, participatory dialogical practice, and the socio-political relevance of performance. Forced migration is seen as comprehensive topic for future ethnomusicology. The contents of the book mirror influential discourses of ethnomusicology today that will definitely shape the future development of the discipline

Switching Partners: Dancing with the Ontological Engineers

Ontologies are today being applied in almost every field to support the alignment and retrieval of data of distributed provenance. Here we focus on new ontological work on dance and on related cultural phenomena belonging to what UNESCO calls the “intangible heritage.” Currently data and information about dance, including video data, are stored in an uncontrolled variety of ad hoc ways. This serves not only to prevent retrieval, comparison and analysis of the data, but may also impinge on our ability to preserve the data that already exists. Here we explore recent technological developments that are designed to counteract such problems by allowing information to be retrieved across disciplinary, cultural, linguistic and technological boundaries. Software applications such as the ones envisaged here will enable speedier recovery of data and facilitate its analysis in ways that will assist both archiving of and research on dance

An Investigation of the Utility of Microblogging in a Virtual Organisation

Virtualisation is one possible business strategy of an organisation. The nature of virtual organisations is that individuals or teams are distributed over different work sites. This leads to barriers in communication,coordination and collaboration between these entities due to dispersed expertise, time zones, languages, cultures, etc. To address these issues, virtual organisations have invested in ICT for supporting collaboration between cross-site colleagues. One very new collaborative technology is microblogging. Microblogging supports asynchronous communication between multiple persons. Microblogging is based upon transmission of short messages that can be sent from Web-based microblogging systems, instant messaging tools, email or mobile phones. Microblogging has some relevant features like simplicity, immediacy, accessibility and presence. This paper describes our investigation of the utility of microblogging, particularly the Twitter tool, for collaboration support in a virtual organisation. Since microblogging is very new and was introduced only recently, no work has been done on this exact topic. The investigation involved conducting an online survey to collect participants’ opinions about the utility of Twitter in the workplace after using Twitter over a three-week period. The study yielded quantitative and qualitative results regarding participants’ experience of Twitter. It was found that microblogging could be adapted to virtual organisations quickly due to ease of use in terms of taking less time and effort for creating microblogs. Twitter could be used in virtual organisations for collaboration support because it is believed that the use of Twitter could somewhat improve communication between cross-site co-workers. However, to be well accepted by virtual organisations, Twitter needs improvement and addition to its existing functionality