Canadian <Metadata> Forum

Multimedia Expert Panel Discussion -
Introductions and Remarks
of the Moderator

Diana Dale
Department of Canadian Heritage

Available also in [PDF 10 KB]

Welcome to our multimedia panel presentation. It is my turn to introduce our esteemed panelists:

René Paquet, Manager, Electronic Archives Preservation, Library and Archives Canada. René has worked in fields involved with broadcast, video, multimedia systems and their related metadata. At present, he is developing the infrastructure for Digitization on Demand. He is a member of an interdepartmental working group to develop a common search capability for multiple databases using different metadata through XML-based technologies and MPEG-7.

Alexander Eykelhof is the Director for Information Technology and the Ontario Colleges Digital Library at the Bibliocentre, a consortium service for the community colleges of Ontario. Alex has been involved in metadata and multimedia projects for a number of years including the award winning Bibscan project and most recently a virtual reference project for the colleges and a metadata initiative for Canarie.

David McKnight is the Director of the Digital Collections Program, McGill University Libraries. In the course of designing McGill's digital collections, he has included multimedia elements (for example 3-D architectural models and flash objects). He is also the metadata consultant for the Molson Informatics Online Medical Learning Object Project.

So now you know who we are. We were discussing over lunch amongst ourselves that we have no idea who is out there in the audience. Could you just by a quick show of hands indicate who has worked with multimedia?

As moderator, I have a few preliminary comments to make:

1. The objective of our panel discussion is to foster an awareness of multimedia and its special metadata needs.
2. The working definition of multimedia which we will be using is : "Multimedia typically refers to some combination of text, sound, graphics, animation and video presented in an integrated way."
3. Due to the time constraints, we are ruling out any discussion concerning copyright or intellectual property rights.
4. I will be holding the panelists to a strict schedule. I am sure they will cooperate fully. I will be holding up a flash card when they are down to one minute and then again at 0 minutes left.
5. Because of our wish to deal with this complicated topic in the allotted time, we are asking the audience to keep questions until the end.

Our first presentation, 5 minutes in length, will be made by Alex who will answer the first question: "What is MPEG and its various forms?"

[Alex Eykelhof's response]

Thank you Alex. Now we move on to the next part of the presentation where each panelist will in turn address in 4 minutes or less the question:

"What value if any does metadata provide for multimedia?"

[René Paquet's response] (available in French only)
[Alex Eykelhof's response]
[David McKnight's response]

Thank you very much for your insights, panelists. Now we go on to the next question where each panelist will have 5 minutes or less to answer the following question:

"What methodology has each panel member followed in the implementation of metadata?"

[René Paquet's response] (available in French only)
[Alex Eykelhof's response]
[David McKnight's response]

Thank you.

The final topic for which each panelist will have 4 minutes or less to address is: "Metadata and multimedia: Where are we? Where are we going? Where do we need to be?"

[René Paquet's response] (available in French only)
[Alex Eykelhof's response]
[David McKnight's response]

Thank you very much indeed. We have done our best to "compress" a great deal of information about multimedia this afternoon in the brief amount of time we had. I hope that if we have another event next year, we will be able to present a more in-depth and more interactive panel approach.

I am sure the panelists have sparked some questions from the audience. We have some time for questions at this point. We really would like to hear from you.