Project Notes >

Continuing Operations & Follow-On Projects

Continuing operations will require a support person, who will:

• Communicate project status on a regular basis to funders and the AAAI community, perhaps beyond; Request new materials from members periodically.
• Add new video information (including complete videos, clips, metadata, notes, commentary, tags) to the archive. Viewers will provide new information via e-mail or by updating the Wiki.
• Tune the search engine as necessary.
• Update the master catalog information for the archivist (e.g., by updating an XML metadata document).
• Migrate the master catalog, metadata, index and Web pages to new formats as needed.
• Burn DVDs on request: free to non-profit institutions (colleges & universities, museums and libraries), at cost to individuals.
• Follow up on suggestions from the AAAI membership; Upgrade Web site as needed.
• If any objection from a person in a video, remove offending video clips immediately. BGB: I believe the preservation part of the project presents no significant legal risk. Putting short video clips up on the Web for non-profit, pedagogical purposes also seems low risk. However, I believe we still would want to be able to show a good-faith effort to secure permissions and copyright releases in case anyone believes a video clip degrades his or her reputation or we are using copyrighted materials without permission.

Possible next steps on the Web site could include:

• Advanced video search.
• Explore software (e.g., Microsoft Producer) for creating synchronized video/slide presentations. We want to have the ability to search both demos and "talking heads."
• Explore tagging (à la Flickr), commentary from the authors (and others on the tapes - who may be able to provide interesting background, details, and other perspectives), feedback from viewers, links to papers and presentations (and maybe code), connection with experts. We could try to put the materials into historical context. What happened next? What did this work lead to? What problems remain to be solved?
• We might be able to make the search novel and use some advanced techniques to improve the user experience.
• We could also allow for rating (à la YouTube), recommendations (à la NetFlix) and so on.
• We should scout around the other various video Web sites for ideas (e.g., Google Video, blinkx.tv, Gofish, Truveo (now part of AOL)).
• Could we engage a company like Google (or Medstory) to do something interesting?
• Migrate master catalog and index to new formats as needed; periodically create new copies of master catalog (CD, DVDs) to send to archivists. Need to consider what to do with the hard drives we send them.