IASA's 55th Annual Conference

This session consists of 2 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ Casey McNamara, Brianna Toth - Surfing the Ocean of Metadata with MediaConch to Meet the Needs of Many (Long presentation)

➺ Morgan Morel, Dave Rice, Charles Hosale - Updating Open Source AV Preservation Tools to Better Serve the Preservation Community (Short presentation)


**Abstracts:**


➺ Surfing the Ocean of Metadata with MediaConch to Meet the Needs of Many
--
Casey McNamara, Brianna Toth (Long presentation)
--
The Audio and Moving Image Preservation (AMIP) department of the New York Public Library and the Smithsonian’s Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI) are both centralized preservation units that serve multiple curatorial branches of large, publicly funded research institutions. Both are undertaking mass digitization of heterogeneous collections of audiovisual materials for preservation and access, and both have a digitization output of thousands of files per year, using a combination of in-house labs and external vendor services. Quality Control procedures play an important role in both institutions' workflows, and, at this scale, automation of QC is essential. This presentation looks at how these two institutions make use of MediaArea's open source tool MediaConch to ensure specification conformance for their digital assets. In the case of NYPL AMIP, MediaConch has been part of the QC toolkit for several years, but new efforts are being made to refine its use with the aid of Python scripting. The case of AVMPI, as a relatively new initiative, MediaConch has been beneficial to develop quality control policies in tandem with (rather than in reaction to) digitization procedures. The presenters will share how they have collaborated with one another to develop their individual policies, touch on the learning curves they experienced using new digital tools, rigidity vs. permissiveness in standards, and their hopes and dreams for the future of QC.

➺ Updating Open Source AV Preservation Tools to Better Serve the Preservation Community
--
Morgan Morel, Dave Rice, Charles Hosale (Short presentation)
--
FADGI (Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative) has a longstanding partnership with developers within the audiovisual (AV) community, aimed at refining and advancing open-source tools essential for practitioners. In 2024, FADGI collaborated closely with developers Dave Rice and Jérôme Martinez to extend the functionality of key tools such as FFmpeg, vrecord, and BWF MetaEdit. This presentation offers an overview of the latest enhancements implemented in these applications, highlighting the underlying needs identified within both the US federal community and the broader AV preservation domain that drove their prioritization. Additionally, it delves into the collaborative processes employed, including the utilization of GitHub for project tracking and the crucial role of user testing conducted by community members and stakeholders.