[[WEB4LIB] Formats for audio/video in electronic theses]

[Mark Jordan]

Hi Rich,

On 17 Jun 2001, RICHARD WIGGINS wrote:

>
> Is the thesis truly all digital?  What about the words?  Surely you have a
> printed text you'll have printed out and bound according to all the
> traditional rules? What will I find if I visit the SFU library and try to find
> the thesis on the shelves?  Not just a URL?!  Will the digital content be in
> the back of the bound volume?
>

This thesis is mostly text with some media. We are considering requiring
an "archival" (i.e., printed as a conventional thesis) copy of the text
but are still working with all parties involved to agree on exactly what
the requirements will be.

> For Web distribution, will the content be marked up in HTML?  XML?  SGML? What
> standard?
>

This one will be in HTML, but I'm not sure about the level of validity we
can achieve this late in the game. I have to admit that we got involved in
this process too late for my comfort. If I had my choice of standard,
right now I would go with XML DocBook for the text. Finding a suitable
authoring environment that everyone in the university could use is a
different problem (WordPerfect would do the job, but again, getting
everyone to use it would be a challenge).

> A lot of experts give an unqualified assertion that you must use
> non-proprietary formats in all cases. But a new, superior, but obscure,
> non-proprietary format may disappear entirely.  I suspect players for MP3 and
> Real and PDF will be here in the 5 year time frame you describe. Whether they
> preserve at necessary resolution is another matter.
>

I totally agree. However, MPEG is an open standard (ISO), admittedly with
a lot of proprietary technology (i.e., patented codecs) associated with
it.

>
> I bet very few folks have seriously tackled this problem in a way that
> preserves the digital content for posterity without leaving time bombs for
> future readers or librarians.

Doh! I was hoping you wouldn't remind me of that!

Thanks for the words of encouragement,

Mark

Mark Jordan
Librarian / Analyst, Systems Division
W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada
Phone (604) 291 5753 / Fax (604) 291 3023
mjordan at sfu.ca / http://www.sfu.ca/~mjordan/