Report of the Library Technology Officer

June 2003

Vanderbilt Television News Archive

Off-air recording

111 Evening news programs were recorded and added to the collection
24 Special broadcasts were recorded and added to the collection

Web server access

939	new customers registered on the website
68,948	total entries in activity log
17,521	views of the home page
3,897	views of the search page
4,969	searches executed
2,097	Calenadars viewed
15,853	individual records viewed
7,123	program listings viewed

Abstracting and Database Maintenance

2,190 new records were added to the TV-NewsSearch database bringing it to a total of 720,953 records.
324 programs were cataloged into the database
2,541 records modified.

Visitors

The Archive had no on-site visitors this month.

Loan Requests filled

44 orders processed in June 2003
Compilation tapes were produced totaling 24.8 hours of content
Duplications of programs were produced totaling 17.5 hours of content
62.0 hours of content were produced for delivery to the Library of Congress

View the Cumulative Table of Statistics for the Archive's activities.

Personnel

The archive employed a new student worker, Elizabeth Dohrmann, daughter of Molly Dohrmann who works in Special Collections. Elizabeth will work through mid-July, after which she will travel to Germany and then return to school at Yale.

Digitization Activities

One of the major activities in the Archive in June involved the completion of the new digital off-air recording and videotape transfer facility. This installation comes closer to the completion of a development and phased deployment that began over a year ago, and marks a major step in the transition of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive in its transformation to an all-digital operation. This process involved the following phases:

Investigation Phase. In August 2002, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive was awarded a $93,000 grant to explore digital video technologies, select equipment, and design techniques and workflows appropriate for the Archive as it seeks alternatives to its previous videotape operation. During the course of the grant, we have been working with a number of different hardware and software components to evaluate their performance and suitability for our project.
Initial Prototype. By May 2003 we had developed a prototype of a digital video workstation that satisfied the basic requirements for digital off-air recording and for conversion of videotapes. Many different iterations of the prototype were tested before a final design was selected. This initial prototype was developed and tested in Marshall's office in the GLB.
Grant Proposal for Complete Off-air Digital Studio. After a period of testing, we submitted a grant proposal to fund the acquisition of ten digital video stations, the number we perceived to be necessary for a complete transition from recording on videotape to an all-digital process. We record news programs from four television networks, but require redundancy to ensure that no programs are missed due to equipment failure or human error. The foundation responded favorably to our proposal, funding the entire $68,599 requested for the project.
Phase One installation (April-June 2003). All the equipment necessary to create 10 digital video stations was ordered in mid April. All of the video equipment was delivered quickly, but the shipment of the computers themselves was delayed. By temporarily allocating of three existing computers in the Archive and using two computers purchased through the NSF grant we were able to install five digital video stations. Although there were some problems with the three stations that were based on computers of a different model than that tested in the prototype, we were able to begin some digital operations. With five functional stations, we began a regime of digitizing some of the retrospective collection as well as digitally recording all new programs. Steve Davis, hired to work with the NSF project, began spending all his time at the Archive to perform retrospective digital conversion. This initial phase of the implementation allowed the Archive staff to become acquainted with the new digital system and to help us refine the daily workflow patterns and make adjustments in the configuration of the equipment to operate more efficiently.
Phase Two Installation (July 2003). With the arrival of all the computers and monitors by the end of June, we were able to install all ten digital video stations by the beginning of July. Having all ten stations equipped with exactly the same hardware and software provided a more consistent environment than the earlier phase where some of the computers were different. The full complement of ten stations will allow more redundancy in the recording operation and should support a higher volume of conversion of the retrospective videotape collection. The primary constraining factor will be the amount of staff time available to process the material. Testing will continue throughout July, which should allow us to identify and correct any remaining problems with the system before production use of the system begins.
Production Switchover (August 1, 2003). Unless we identify significant problems, the Archive's primary recording of all new programs will be digital starting with this date. Although we have been creating digital files for all new programs since the Phase One stage of implementation, videotapes were still created as the master copy of the program. Once the production switchover occurs, all the abstracting will be done with the digital version. The U-Matic system will continue in operation until the Archive is confident that the new system meets acceptable levels of reliability. A backup system of VHS recorders currently provides a layer of backup to the U-Matic videotape system, and will continue with the new digital system.

Library Technology Officer Activities

A major activity during June 2003 involved completing a grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund a project to perform a wholesale conversion of the Archive's retrospective conversion. A previous version of this grant proposal was submitted to NEH in 2002, but was not funded in that cycle. Given our experience accomplished through the NSF grant-funded project, the new proposal offers stronger arguments for funding. The proposal will be considered by NEH in the Fall for a possible May 2004 funding opportunity. Many library staff participated in the preparation of the grant proposal: Marshall re-wrote and expanded many sections of the original grant proposal to address the concerns expressed by the panel of reviewers; Paul Gherman revised several sections, Flo Wilson reviewed the budget component and proofread the entire document; John Haar proofread the documents; John Lynch reviewed the proposal, and Cecelia Walker served as the final editor of the proposal, implemented all the corrections and changes suggested by other readers and performed the many steps involved in submitting the proposal through the University's Office of Sponsored Research.

A great deal of Marshall's time this month was devoted to installing equipment at the TV News Archive. Each of the ten workstations needed a number of components installed and configured. The existing CD-ROM drive was replaced with a DVD-R drive; a 150GB IDE drive is installed along with an additional IDE 133 controller card; a Optibase MovieMaker Xpress 200S MPEG-2 encoding card, a Hauppauge WinTV 350-PRV television card, Darim M-Filter timebase corrector, a switchbox for controlling video sources, an uninterruptible power supply, speakers, and monitor. Each piece of equipment required cabling hook-ups and setting of configuration options. LITS staff assisted by installing the operating system and main software applications using the Norton Ghost disk replication application. John Lynch participated in the installation process by setting up the cabling system for television signal reception, including setting up switches that select between rooftop antennas and cable TV. John also installed a set of shelving needed to hold the video monitors and backup VHS equipment.

Marshall added new functionality to the TV News database to facilitate the tracking of material digitized. As we begin a higher volume of digitization, it is necessary to have some automated process for identifying the status of programs. The database schema was extended to include new fields for indicating that a segment was digitized the date it was digitized, if it has been transcoded to RealMedia, if it has been written to DVD-R, what VCR was used, and what PC workstation was used.

Marshall worked with Paul Bielaczy, a student working for the Art and Art History Department to transfer a set of records created with an external database into the Slide Image database. These records were created with the old Athena system for the purpose of creating slide labels, but Slide Library staff also wanted them to be automatically transferred into the new system.

Marshall attended the American Library Association Annual Conference in Toronto from June 21 through 24. Some of Marshall's activities include convening the Sirsi Large Sites Interest Group, participating in the LITA Top Technology Trends Panel, attending a few LITA programs, and meeting with executives from a wide range of library automation companies.

Meetings and Committees

The Web Development Task Force, Library Management Council, and attended the LMC Retreat.

Extra-curricular Activities

Marshall gave an online presentation titled "Chief Considerations in Choosing an ILS" for the Dynix Institute Web Seminar Series. Though sponsored by a commercial company, these seminars target a broad audience and are completely vendor-neutral.

Marshall Breeding