Plan for effective multimedia management

Data Life Cycle stage(s): Preserve Plan

Multimedia data present unique challenges for data discovery, accessibility, and metadata formatting and should be thoughtfully managed. Researchers should establish their own requirements for management of multimedia during and after a research project using the following guidelines. Multimedia data includes still images, moving images, and sound. The Library of Congress has a set of web pages discussing many of the issues to be considered when creating and working with multimedia data. Researchers should consider quality, functionality and formats for multimedia data. Transcriptions and captioning are particularly important for improving discovery and accessibility.

Storage of images solely on local hard drives or servers is not recommended. Unaltered images should be preserved at the highest resolution possible. Store original images in separate locations to limit the chance of overwriting and losing the original image.

Ensure that the policies of the multimedia repository are consistent with your general data management plan.

There are a number of options for metadata for multimedia data, with many MPEG standards (http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/), and other standards such as PBCore (http://pbcore.org).

The following web pages have sections describing considerations for quality and functionality and formats for each of still images, sound (audio) and moving images (video).

Sustainability of Digital Formats Planning for Library of Congress Collections:

Online, generic multimedia repositories and tools (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Google Photos):

are low-cost (can be free)
are open to all
may provide community commenting and tagging
some provide support for explicit licenses and re-use
provide some options for valuable metadata such as geolocation
potential for large-scale dissemination
optimize usability and low barrier for participation
rely on commercial business models for sustainability
may have limits on file size or resolution
may have unclear access, backup, and reliability policies, so ensure you are aware of them before you rely upon them

Specialized multimedia repositories (e.g. MorphBank, LIFE):

provide domain-specific metadata fields and controlled vocabularies customized for expert users
are highly discoverable for those in the same domain
can provide assistance in curating metadata
optimize scientific use cases such as vouchering, image analysis
rely on research or institutional/federal funding
may require high-quality multimedia, completeness of metadata, or restrict manipulation
may not be open to all
may provide APIs for sharing or re-use for other projects
are recognized as high-quality, scientific repositories
may migrate multimedia to new formats (e.g. analog to digital)
may have restrictions on bandwidth usage

Some institutions or projects maintain digital asset management systems, content management systems, or other collections management software (e.g. Specify, KE Emu) which can manage multimedia along with other kinds of data projects or institutions should provide assistance: