The Revolution Will Be Digitized

Another article I read recently was from the Chronicle of Higher Education (Apr. 29, 2005, pp. 30-32) by Scott Carlson, where libraries are creating online archives to preserve and share film and video. [It'll be online on EBSCO Academic Premier for you IU folks in June].

Colleges and universities have realized that they have local materials which are unique, but often they think it's valuable only to them. Maybe, but it's also content (in the new-fashioned way we think of everything). Websites and the people who experience them have a voracious crave for content, and updated content at that; The challenge as William G. Thomas, director of the Virginia Center for Digital History, points out is how to "present, manage, and access video materials."

The barriers: time and staff and equipment to digitize; copyright and rights issues--how or whether the archives which hold this material has the right to exploit it (in a non-profit, fair use manner) that will make it worth their while to collect and manage such materials; and how best to order/catalog/meta-dataize (i.e. give access) to these materials. The time was yesterday, the future is in 15 minutes--strap on your seatbelts, kiddies.