The public television station in Boston is a fore runner for media archives, with over half a million assets from programs and series created at WGBH. As a result the Media Library and Archive was endowed with money to begin the digitization of these assets and they are now free to the public through Open Vault. These videos also include transcripts and some keyword metadata and much more information about the program, series and creators of the clip. There are an assortment of different genres to choose from; arts, sciences, education, business and Massachusetts. Some of the videos go back to the early 1950's. The collection contains masters, stock footage, and stills, as well as the audio/visual assets.
Collection Principles
The creation of the Open Vault was to provide access to their plethora of information which was sitting idle in an archive. It was out of obligation and duty that WGBH created the Open Vault digital collection in order to provide as much access to their facility as possible and benefit the community. According to their assessment document, the majority of their assets still retain enduring value to scholars and community members, by allowing people to reach into the past. Some of their programs were award winning, or critically praised, which I suppose creates enduring value.
Object Characteristics
Although the assessment gives much background into the project itself, it does not provide much in the way of technical information about the project. It is a little disheartening. It seems like the files are in quicktime, which is fairly universal and free to download which is good for most the population who would desire to view this site. The transcripts cannot be downloaded from the site, it can only be read there. Each of the videos would carry much more value if they all had corresponding transcripts based on them. It is unfortunate they do not. I believe that the transcripts were originally records that were kept and later put into the same entry at the Open Vault digital collection site. The site itself is aesthetically pleasing and simple to use. There is an advanced search where you can search by series, date, and other criteria. I found that most of these videos were also only clips of the originals. I understand that the time and effort that would be needed in digitizing the entire segment, but the collection seems to loose its value due to this.
Metadata
The metadata on this site was a bit disappointing as well. Other than search able by keyword and date the collection does not seem to carry any other data about the information. There are nice little narrative snippets about the programs, series, and authors, but this does not compare to the importance of operableness. So this site may be more like an exhibit really, but it was funded by the IMLS grant to create it, so I still feel it is credible.
Intended Audience
The intended audience for WGBH would be Boston and the the other public broadcasting stations across the nation that receive the shows created in Boston, but the audience for Open Vault and its Media Library and Archive are much more diversified. The television station founded this site in order to help educate those wishing to grasp television of the 50's-90's and to learn about history and cinema. The job of PBS is to bring to people a sense of community and WGBH is making it a global community with access to the past of WGBH. Most of the people using the site will be scholarly, or in an education field, but I am sure there are those just wishing to get a little taste of Boston.
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