Report of the Library Technology Officer

September 2003

Vanderbilt Television News Archive

Off-air recording

Web server access

1,070 new customers registered on the website
83,042 total entries in activity log
13,497 views of the home page
4,926 views of the search page
7,041 searches executed
3,197 Calenadars viewed
21,681individual records viewed
14,367 program listings viewed

Abstracting and Database Maintenance

Visitors

Loan Requests filled

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

Publicity

Marshall and John Interviewed by Gail Kerr, a columnist for the Nashville Tennessean. We were interviewed on the 15th for the column published in the September 17th issue.

Marshall was interviewed by Michael Simms for feature on the Archive that will appear in the next issue of the Acorn Chronicle.

Marshall gave brief presentation on TV News for the Friends of the Library on Sept 24th.

Digitization Activities

The Archive received two OptiPlex GX-270 workstations. These will be used primarily for public viewing stations and for student workers as they view MPEG-2 files for quality control. Two new network ports were installed to accommodate these new systems.

Three work-study students were hired to work on tasks related to digitizing the retrospective collection.

Marshall did some work investigating MPEG-2 Viewers for use by the abstractors in the Archive. The one that they currently use, PowerDVD, has a bug that makes it problematic for video clips over 45 minutes in length. We discovered that this problem had been fixed in the newest version of this application. There were some workstation compatibility issues with the new version, which we were able to identify and resolve.

Library Technology Officer Activities

The Television News Archive will begin restricting access to non-subscribers effective January 2004. In order to accommodate this change, a number of programs need to be developed for the TV-NewsSearch application to perform IP authentication, selectively allow access to the search pages, and to collect usage statistics. Marshall devoted a significant amount of time in September to developing programs to support these new requirements.

A new database of institutional subscribers was created. This database tracks information for each organization that subscribes to the archive, including the IP addresses associated with their users.

A set of programs was developed that uses these IP address to track use by institution and will be used to allow access to subscribers once access to the site becomes restricted. The applications track the logins and searches for each user and tracks sessions and searches for each institutional subscriber. The system will accumulate usage statistics consistent with the guidelines issued by ICOLC. In the future, the application will be enhanced to deliver statistics compliant with the NISO Z39.7-2002 (Information Services and Use: Metrics & statistics for libraries and information providers--Data Dictionary).

The new access system also changes somewhat the way in which individual accounts are used. Currently, all users of the TV-NewsSearch service are required to create a member account. Once we implement the institutional subscription system, users that plan only to search the database and view online video can access the system through a default account, associated with the proper institution, which is automatically signed in. Users that intend to make videotape loans will continue to create personal accounts.

Marshall also worked on developing both the hardware and software components of the video delivery system. Four Dell PowerEdge 2651 servers previously ordered were delivered in September. LITS set up a new rackmount cabinet in the GLB Server Facility on the 4th floor and installed the PowerEdge servers and the basic operating system. Marshall installed the Helix Universal Server for streaming media files and the Helix Producer Plus application for transcoding MPEG-2 files into RealMedia format. He configured servers as a cluster, allowing the RealMedia files produced by the Archive to be distributed among several different physical servers. Some work related to the final configuration of the servers remains to be done, but the video server cluster is now available for functionality and performance testing.

He also did further development work on the interface used to deliver the streaming RealMedia files to users. Part of this work included crafting pages that use an embedded media player, allowing video clips to be viewed in fewer steps and producing a less cumbersome display. A link that launches the external media player continues to be available. A significant amount of work also went into developing programs that present links for online video only to authorized Archive staff and to users associated with subscribing institutions, and only for authorized CNN content. The system automatically suppresses video links for material newer than 3 days, in accordance with our agreements.

Marshall revised the Videotape Ordering System to make improvements related to duplications. Orders for duplications now link directly to specific record numbers in the same way that Compilations are handled. This approach was not possible when the system was initially developed. The recent changes in record linking through the HeaderRecords and the availability of runtime date in each record makes this method of handling orders possible now.

Marshall also implemented a number of enhancements to the distributed transcoding environment to improve the automation of this aspect of the operation. When we set up the 10 workstations in the digital recording studio in the Baker Building, they were configured to do transcoding. This server-based approach relieves those workstations from that task, and greatly simplifies the process of creating RealMedia files from the MPEG-2 originals. The system was also enhanced to preserve an additional copy of the MPEG-2 files for programs recorded digitally. This copy serves as an additional layer of backup, which is needed especially in this period while we are not yet sending files to the Library of Congress for permanent Archiving. We are still waiting on LC to finalize the procedure which we will use for transferring MPEG-2 files to them.

Meetings and Committee work

Marshall participated in a day-long meeting of Etana participants on Sept 23rd. The meeting primarily focused on the NSF Grant awarded to Etana through Case Western Reserve University and Virginia Tech, but also involved ABZU, the ETANA web site, and organizational issues.

Marshall implemented an enhancement to the Abzu search engine to accommodate searching of notes fields. He also created a report of ABZU use statistics for the last 12 months.

Marshall attended a demonstration of the Electronic Resource Management application from Innovative Resources organized by the Electronic Resources Task Force.

Extra-curricular Activities

Marshall's regular "Systems Librarian" was published in Computers in Libraries and he authored contributions to the November 2003 issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter published by the American Library Association.