For the last 4 months we have been busy working with Dutch secondary schools in a pilot which experiments with giving online access to
audiovisual heritage. Recently we were welcomed at the DIVERSE 2008 conference to present some preliminary results, see also our short paper. DIVERSE is a community which shares experience about developing interactive visual educational resources for students all over the world.
One of the points which we stressed was that we found that although teachers and students liked the idea of working with audiovisual heritage, to use and reuse it into presentations and learning objects, it was hard for them to put this into actual practice.
In our discussion on the reasons why this is so hard, we found out that there are some commonalities with other projects and countries. This was also mentioned by someone as a “changing teaching paradigm”. We experienced that there’s not only lack of facilities and technical difficulties which made it hard for secondary schools to integrate our pilot in their curriculum. We also found a lack of ICT skills and imagination with teachers trying to take it into practice. Students weren’t much motivated because there was no full support from their teachers.
On behalf of the National Archives of the UK, Andrew Payne presented a similar project Focus on Film in wich students and teachers are able to use films from the archive. They can edit, show it to others and even download the original video. A lot of work was done on putting all material in an apprehensive context. Although he impressed us with the fact that in 1 year the project is running, 1000 people have already registred and there were 2,5 million visitors in one year, he agreed on the same difficulties.
How can we overcome this challenge? Today I attended a meeting at the Stranger festival where UK based think tank Demos spoke about their research on how youngh people are changing Europe. Celia and Tommy stressed that the ability to put information into representations (video etc.) is a skill like reading and writing which is likely to becoming more and more important to participate in civil society. This makes you think about whose responsibiliy it is to foster this. Will our educational system be able to take this responsibility? What is needed?
Nikki Timmermans | Knowledgeland
Tags: audiovisual heritage, education, europe, secondary schools
This entry was posted by Nikki Timmermans
on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Product development, User research.
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And so it almost begins .. we await three intensive days in which we will discuss the future of archives, legal issues concerning orphan works and so much more. Thanks to The Balie the main conference can be followed real-time at The Balie live stream. Our bloggers will cover the conference almost in realtime on this blog. What can we expect from the conference?
Thursday April 10 - Legal Seminar – Sound and Vision - Hilversum
A day dedicated to legal issues concerning digital heritage. Images for the Future will host the afternoon program of the Economies of the Commons Legal Seminar for legal experts, scholars and law students. Regarding the Images for the Future project the participants will work on the issue of orphan works and rights clearing. Venue for the seminar is the Sound and Vision building in Hilversum.
Friday April 11 - Economies of the Commons
The conference starts with a keynote of Peter Kaufman (Intelligent Television) followed by a panel about the changing role of National Archives. What are the challenges large-scale digitization and online services have to offer? With Pelle Snickars (SLBA), Richard Paterson (British Film Institute), Tobias Golodnoff (Dansk Culturarv), and Roei Amit (INA).
After the lunch we continue with the second session about Commons-based Peer Production. How do new developments of creative reuse hold out against market-based production? With Felix Stalder (Open Flows), Jamie King (Steal This Film), Jon Phillips (Creative Commons) en Sebastian Lütgert (oil21.org).
The afternoon ends with a session about the European Digital Library. With Paul Doorenbosch (KB - National Library of The Netherlands), Jill Cousins (Director European Digital Library), Sonja de Leeuw (Utrecht University/ case: Video Active), Georg Eckes (Deutsches Filminstitut / case: European Film Gateway).
Friday evening: Sustainable Images for the Future / 20.30h
The Friday night is dedicated to Images for the Future and the Commons. Edwin van Huis (Director General of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision) will provide the introduction about the largest digitization project in the Netherlands, Images for the Future. Rick Prelinger will continue to focus on the future of archives demonstrated by the case of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 48.000 films of which a central selection has been added to the Library of Congress. David Bolier (www.onthecommons.org) speaks on the subject of value creation in open networks and how to link the Commons with government and industry. We end the session with a panel discussion with the speakers and Emjay Rechsteiner of the Dutch Filmmuseum about the Commons and Dutch audiovisual archives.
Saturday April 12 / 11.00 - 18.00h
Uncommon Business Models – 11.00h
In this session we will take on the subject of open business models. Two experts from related media industries that are arguably ahead of the curve will kick off the workshop. Jan Velterop, CEO of Knewco and one of the leading experts on Open Access, will give us an insight in the deployment of open business models in scientific publishing. Over the past couple of years Open Access has been able to provide a valid and sustainable alternative in this 7 billion dollar industry. Jonas Woods, Head of Music at the pioneering music company Last.fm, will pick up from there. In his presentation he will highlight how his company has successfully generated income streams in an industry that has shown to be particularly vulnerable in the open environment of the Internet. These examples will pave the way for an interesting discussion with panelists Peter Kaufman (Intelligent Television), Roei Amit (INA), Rick Prelinger (Prelinger Archives) and Eerde Hovinga (NIBG-tbc).
In the afternoon we focus on Intangible Heritage Resources in the (Non-) Western World. With Joost Smiers (Prof. em. Political Science of the Arts), Shubha Chaudhuri (ARCE), Anthony McCann (University of Ulster) Wim van Zanten (ICTM).
The last panel consists of Professional Cultural Producers. With Florian Schneider (Kein.tv), Kenneth Goldsmith (Ubuweb), Bauke Freiburg (Fabchannel / Culture Player), Chai Locher (NFTVM - tbc), Rick Prelinger (Prelinger Archives).
Enough said .. come back soon for notes, video’s, discussion and much more! Don’t forget to bookmark the site www.ecommons.eu for more detailed background, articles and related projects and documents.
Geert Wissink & Johan Oomen
Tags: archives, business models, Intellectual Property, library, television
This entry was posted by Geert Wissink
on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Intellectual Property, Market models, Technology, User research.
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Nisimasa, a European network of young film professionals, students and enthusiasts for European cinema, devoted their March edition of their online magazine to the topic Film Archives. According to chief editor Caroline Fournier, young film professionals don’t really know much about this topic and are closed off because of bad access. At the same time archives have great potential to contribute to their future work through reuse of the material.
“These images can become part of the artistic process, in a society which wants to recycle its heritage, which likes to reuse old images in order to realise something new”
There are interesting initiatives going on to give better access the material. Film Archives Online for example gives free access to catalogue information of film archives from all over Europe, via a multi-lingual web portal. At the Moving Images Archive you can view around 2000 films from the Prelinger Archives. But, do these facilitate young filmmakers in reusing the archives enough? What do young filmmakers expect from the archives? How can cultural heritage contribute to their work and how would they like to have access? If you have an opinion on this topic, please comment.
Tags: access, europe, film, nisimasa, nisimazine
This entry was posted by Nikki Timmermans
on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 1:11 pm and is filed under User research.
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The Library of Congress and Flickr together announced a pilot to put a selection of the photo collection of the LOC on Flickr. The community will tag. Will it also capture the imagination of other institutions?
Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3000 photos from two of the most popular collections are being made available on the new Flickr page. Including only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.
The Library of Congress is not the first putting their archive on Flickr to gain more visibility and accessibility. A lot of prominant museums already did, like the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Powerhouse Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum & the Renwick Museum. They all put their collection in a place where people actually spend more time than on the website of the museum itself.
The Commons
So, would this grand announcement be just a clever marketing trick to get the attention of the internet savvy youth? Maybe. But The Library of Congres doesn’t want to be just another collection on Flickr. They officially partnered with Flickr to move the Flickr community to tag the photo’s and baptised the pilot “The Commons”.
Their goal is to increase exposure to the collections and to facilitate the collection of general knowledge with the hope that this information can feed back into the catalogues, making them richer and easier to search. With this pilot the Library of Congress embraces the “power of the web”, as we can read on their blog:
We’re also very excited that, as part of this pilot, Flickr has created a new publication model for publicly held photographic collections called “The Commons.” Flickr hopes—as do we—that the project will eventually capture the imagination and involvement of other public institutions, as well. From the Library’s perspective, this pilot project is a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and—most importantly—wisdom.
I hope that this pilot will get the attention of other institutions and encourage them to explore the rules of the web more profoundly. If you take a look at the collection already tagged it is impressive to see that some objects already have 25 tags. Somebody got payed to do this?
For the press release of the Library of Congress pilot on Flickr click here.
Tags: access, con, flickr, libraryofcongress, photo, socialtagging
This entry was posted by Nikki Timmermans
on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Product development, User research.
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Interesting figures from the other side of the ocean. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released findings showing that 48% of internet users have been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and the daily traffic to such sites on a typical day has doubled in the past year.
The basic findings in a national phone survey that ended in December show:
- 48% of internet users said they had ever visited a video-sharing site such as YouTube. A year ago, in December 2006, 33% of internet userssaid they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
- 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site “yesterday” - the day before they were contacted for our survey. A year ago, 8% had visited such a site “yesterday.” Thus, on an average day, the number of users of video sites nearly doubled from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007.
The dramatic growth in the population using video-sharing sites is tied at least in part to the popularity of such sites among men, younger adults (those under age 30), and college graduates. Nearly a third of wired young adults (30%) watch a video on a site like YouTube on a typical day and fully a fifth of online men
(20%) do the same. At the same time, growth in daily traffic doubled among some other demographic groups including women, those ageds 30 to 49 and high school graduates.
The report mentions some other interesting figures. Some of that growth comes from people posting their own amateur videos on such sites. In PEW’s most recent survey, they found that 22% of Americans shoot their own videos and that 14% of them post some of that video online. That is more than triple the percentage of video takers who said they had posted videos when we asked a similar question in a survey taken February-April in 2006.
Read the full report on the website of the PEW Internet Foundation
Tags: facts, internet, usage, video-sharing
This entry was posted by Geert Wissink
on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 9:01 pm and is filed under User research.
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Tipped by a post on the weblog Mediaonderzoek.nl I discovered that research conducted by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) this November showed that the Dutch not only spend more time online and less on watching television, but also that we watch more online video and behave more like prosumers on the internet than the average European.
Some conclusions on media use in the Netherlands
EIAA conducted research in Europe and interviewed 500 people in the Netherlands. A few interesting conclusions:
- internet penetration in Holland is the biggest in Europe; 81% uses internet weekley, 80% via broadband
- the Dutch surf 5,6 days average a week
- a quarter we can find on fora
- 40% of the Dutch using internet visit social networking sites
- 26% of the 16-24 year olds spend more time on surfing the internet that watching television
- since 2006 the amount of 55 plus people and women using the internet rose by 11%
- the Dutch blog: the amount of people blogging rose by 30% since 2006
Interestingly but not very new, the research shows that there is a clear shift from the traditional media consumption of watching television to watching online in the Netherlands. The amount of Dutch internet users that watch at least once a month online television programmes, films or videoclips rose between 2006 with 133%. 42% watches less TV, 20% listens less radio and 23% reads less often a paper. The shift is a fact.
Building personal archives
Not only do the Dutch ‘passively’ watch video on the internet, the research also concludes that the Dutch are the most active prosumers of Europe. 40% of the Dutch creates online content, whereas the European average is 18%. However this research doesn’t show whether this development is growing fast, you can guess that this will be big in the near future. Camera’s are getting cheaper every day, it becomes regular to have a mobile phone with a camera in it and easy to put it somewhere on the web.
So, everybody can create content when, where and where ever he or she likes. And we do! A collegue of mine just had a baby. In one month you could find more audiovisual content on the web about his life than about mine, and I already exist for 26 years. Research conducted by Ruigrok Netpanel for the Next Web about Web 2.0 in the Netherlands showed that now already 50% of the Dutch people share their photo’s online; and 16% does this with video content.
Personal versus institutional archives?
It seems like there is a tension between the core bussiness of Images for the Future, actually digitizing our audiovisual heritage of the past, and the broad social movement we see in the growth of User Generated Content and thus personal archives. How does this interfere? Or, how can this succesfully come together? How can we unite the world of the archives and the world of the private collections? In Holland there is a project which is trying to open up personal archives; audiovisual material right out of your parents dusty ceiling, this project is called Images of our Past. Why not combine theses personal stories with the official stories which are nationally archived?
Some institutions are already experimenting with this idea. A few Dutch broadcasters already announced plans on working with user generated content platforms. SBS will create it’s own platform like the German ProSieben Sat1 does with Myvideo; NPO will work together with popular social networking site Hyves. These are interesting cases which will show what can be possible and what will be desirible.
Tags: Netherlands, personal archives, prosumer, UGC, UserResearch
This entry was posted by Nikki Timmermans
on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 9:11 am and is filed under User research.
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Your social network is quickly opening up to all kinds of new business oportuntities. Last week Google unveiled a new set of application program interfaces (APIs) that allow third party programmers to build widgets that take advantage of personal data and profile conections on a social network site. In other words, applications will be connected to your Linkedin network so that, for example, people you know will be able to see which books you read or which airline you prefer. The initiative dubbed Open Social was marked ‘open’ because developers don’t have to create completely new applications for each site (read more about this on ZD news). This allows one single application to tap into not only the network of Linkedin but also into the networks of say Hyves , Plaxo and friendster, indeed connecting your knowledge and tastes with the millions. Interesting showcase is Shelfari that let’s you create a virtual bookshelf of the books you are reading that you can share with your network(s).
This opens up a whole new ballgame for all the digital heritage files we are in the process of digitizing: Open Social may allow you in the future to build a whole library of film footage and art collections you want to recommend to friends or colleagues; Tapping into the right networks may also allow much more efficient sharing of information about photographs that that nobody knew existed anymore. Who knows, adding metadata might become a favorite social activity of our children and grandchildren.
Tags: digitizing, open social, social network
This entry was posted by Harry Verwayen
on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Product development, Technology, User research.
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Today comScore released the results of a study into the online habits of European internet audiences. The Netherlands are running in front! We have the highest internet adoption.
The European region recorded its largest ever Internet audience in September with a 5-percent year over year growth, reaching 226.7 million unique visitors age 15 or older.
Internet adoption was highest in the Netherlands, where 82 percent of the country’s population age 15 or older was online in September. After the Netherlands, adoption rates were highest in the Nordic region, where the Internet was accessed by 73 percent of the total population of Sweden, 72 percent of Denmark and Norway, and 66 percent of the Finnish population.On average, internet users in Sweden viewed more pages than any other European country - 3,844 pages per visitor. The country also spent the second longest average period of time on the internet in September at 30.1 hours per visitor. In the Netherlands people viewed 3,051 pages per visitor and spend 26,3 hours on the internet in September.
That’s an average of 1,9 page per minute for the Netherlands. So, when we develop new online services, we have to keep in mind people go fast!
This entry was posted by Nikki Timmermans
on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 2:13 pm and is filed under User research.
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Research shows that people are getting more active on the internet as ‘prosumers’. This challenges traditional market research in a profound way. How to get rich data from your consumers in a digital world? New methods are developed to do user research. Ruigrok Netpanel runs an interesting pilot where participants can tag products.
If we believe Ruigrok, tagging is not only a way to organise your information, it can also be a powerful tool to get feedback from consumers or prosumers (producers cum consumers) on your products. Today Marja Ruigrok presented their first demo of a ‘tagging research tool’ at the 2007 Marketing Information Event.
Do reseach where your public is at!
According to research Ruigrok conducted, we can find 83% of the Dutch society on the internet; 49% is 2-3 hours online per dy; 1 out of 10 has a weblog, mostly for fun; 51% is co-creating on the internet of which uploading photo’s is the most popular. An important motive for people to do this is that they participate in a creative process. Not very surprising the biggest group active in co-creation are young people under 35.
So, co-creation is an important tool to get a dialogue with your consumer, especially the ones under 35. Ruigrok also calls it research 2.0. It includes that:
- research is no longer a one way street but a 2-way street
- respondents are now to be called participants
- researh is getting more qualitative
- consumers want to be taken serious; if they are willing to participate in your research, you have to make sure that those few minutes are fun
- new techniques will enable participants to interact with the researchers in a new way
MindMe?
Inspired by 2.0 application Fleck, Ruigrok decided to do a pilot with tagging. The idea is simple, participants can tag for example websites by placing colored tags and comment on it. This can be done alone or in a group process, moderated by a researcher.
A first pilot showed that the data was comparable with their more traditional quantative and qualitative methods. MindMe/MyMind, as one of the participants of the workshop suggested as name for the new research tool, showed that this method could get open response, quick feedback, easy to analyze, visual attractive and fun for the participants.
One of the challenges for the Images for the Future team is how to develop services together with the public it is meant for. This shows that people want to participate & co-create. But, if they do it has to be fun, an experience itself. Only than you will have full attention and feedback.
Research by Ruigrok (Dutch)
Presentation web2.0 @ NextWeb by Ruigrok
This entry was posted by Nikki Timmermans
on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Product development, User research.
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