Formats for audio/video in electronic theses

[Mark Jordan]

Hi,

Like many universities, we are finally having to confront the submission
of totally electronic (i.e., "born digital") theses. We are now preparing
to accept our first one, which contains a small amount of video and audio
material.

What formats do other univeristy libraries recommend for video and audio
clips that are part of electronic theses? Medium-term access (5-10 years)
is our immediate goal -- we admit that we will very likely have to migrate
material to newer formats as time passes. These theses will be distributed
over the web and not tied to any specific file storage medium.

I've looked at the EDT 2001 Conference website and some of the resources
linked there, looked at the Web4Lib Reference Center, and probed the web
in a number of other places, not finding much by way of recommendations
that parallel the standard advice of storing images in 600 dpi TIFFs.
>From what I've gathered so far, some form of MPEG for video and possibly
MP3 for audio would be my best bets because they are based on an open
standard (MPEG is part of ISO). However, I haven't spent enough time nor
am I enough of an expert to recommed what MPEG specifications we should
adhere to in accepting multimedia as part of electronic theses.

I'd love to hear from some others who've already tackled this problem.

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/