Research also may need to be carried out in public or private archives. The difficulty here is finding out about the holdings of a particular archive. How might one identify the sound, video, photographic and/or other materials they hold relating to one's area of interest. Usually a phone call is necessary to establish the appropriate contact person, and then a follow-up in writing. A number of points need to be covered in the written follow-up, dealing with reference tools, preview facilities, clearing copyright, copying, and licensing materials.
Reference tools. Regarding reference tools, the following points should be considered. Do they have computer listings or published catalogue? In the case of broadcast items, programme notes are more informative than catalogue entries, although, if they exist at all and have not been lost, they are usually difficult to access and are often stored with the recorded artefact. Not all archives have a fully comprehensive catalogue of their holdings, and catalogue entries often give scant information about the content of a particular item. Some organisations restrict access to their catalogues, and only respond to requests for a specific item of material. If you do not know what thay have, they would not tell you. Clearly, research was very difficult under such circumstances. Print-outs of synopses from catalogues are invaluable, although they will seldom give any indication of recording quality or provide sufficient detail of contents.
Preview facilities. Ultimately, there is no substitute for travelling to the archive to preview items. One should ask if there are preview facilities and what times and dates facilities are available. Sometimes preview of materials can incur a cost and it is important also to clarify these costs and methods of payment. Note that, in many cases, one needs to make appointments and give advance notice on what materials needs to be viewed. A decision will have to be made, based upon content, quality, cost and convenience about the suitability of previewed material for inclusion in the final multimedia product.
Clearing copyright. Arrangements for copying to be done is usually only possible after having cleared copyright with the copyright holders of an item. Archive sources only usually own the material artefacts and not the copyright on those artefacts. (See copyright.) The archive can be very helpful in identifying the copyright owners but it is the responsibility of the developer to contact the copyright holder (or their estate in the case of a deceased original owner) and secure their agreement. Note that this may incur a cost, although often a copyright holder is satisfied merely to invoke their right to be acknowledged in the proposed product. The developer must then satisfy the archive that either the owner has agreed or, in the case of being unable to contact him/her, that a reasonable attempt has been made to do so -- which is not to say that, at some future date, contact is made with the copyright holder who objects to the inclusion of the material, as is their right! Note that, in the case of a television program, apart from clearing copyright with the program makers and broadcasters, contributors to the program have copyright over their contributions, thus to incorporate an extract from a television interview with someone will require copyright clearance from the television producers and from the person interviewed.
Copying materials. Ultimately, copies of materials required must be made, having cleared copyright with the copyright holders. The cost incurred in the copying/transfer process must be established. Costs are involved in transferring material to a medium the developer can use and in a format the developer can use. Typical media include positive or negative 35mm or 3x4 photo transparency, VHS, S-VHS, Betacam SP, and large capacity digital media such as DAT, Magneto optical disc (128, 650, 1.3MB) and CD-ROM. The facility to transfer between such media greatly cuts down on the costs involved in getting assets into a usable digital format. Costs are difficult to predict in this area. If the material is stored on video master then transfer to VHS, say, will be less costly than if the material is stored on film and requires a telecine process to convert it to video; similarly, if a gallery has a painting on slide already, getting the slide duplicated will be less costly than if the gallery has to arrange for the painting to be photographed. The budget has to cover for such eventualities if particular assets must be included in the finished product. Note that costs are determined upon the duration of a clip in sound and video media and if video is charged for the minute, then 1 minute 5 seconds usually costs twice as much as 55 seconds.
Licensing materials. Arranging for materials to be copied and licensed for use in a multimedia product. Need then to sign a licence agreement with, e.g., the BBC. The BBC licence details the cost, the licensee's obligation to obtain and pay for the consents from any other person having an interest in the recording supplied (remember that the agreement with performers if for a TV broadcast and to use in other broadcast materials, not for use in a different medium -- get radio agreement I signed), to use the recording only for the purposes previously notified, to indemnify the BBC against claims costs expenses arising fgrom the licensing of use of recording, BBC continues to have copyright over the materials for commercial, non-commercial or domestic use, the license is not to be considered as constituting a partnership agreement. The costs of recoding/copying and issuing the license/contract is £100, Need to clear it with all the contributors and need proof before the recording is made. Donated subject to acknowledgements (BBC do not specify the wording). UTV forwarded a time-coded video for pre-view. Note that supplying videos in this form stops them being stolen, if the time code appears centrally placed (otherwise it is easy to crop the video to lose the time code. Assess quality and content Visit to Abbey, initially for research purposes, copies of images require prior booking of an external photographer. Images (drawings, paintings, etchings, lithographs, posters, photographs, bookplates, illustrations
BBC NI terms and conditions: Private use and will not be used outside the UK without prior licence and fee No charge will be made for admission to any showing of the materials. Cassette will not be used for telecasting (TV transmission) anywhere in the world. Telecasts only permitted under separate licence Cassette will not be sold, loaned or hired or otherwise transferred to a third party. BBC is indemnified against claims arising in consequence of any breach of these undertakings. Sent copies of letters to contributors to the BBC
Copyright restrictions do not come under the jurisdiction of the owners of the physical material used to store a work.
It is the responsibility of the developer to trace the copyright owners and secure their permission to incorporate material into the proposed resource.
Provide the following information: the purposes for which the material will be used.
Cost of material may include transfer from film to video (telecine) if there is no video master. Cost can be high (£200 +VAT). Also need written clearance from the copyright holder.
Costs for education may be different from costs for purely commercial purposes.
The BBC have been quite sticky over checking their archive material (both in London and Belfast). I have made formal letters of application to try to gain access. The National Film Archive despite the BBC's line has not got a fully comprehensive catalogue of film material on WB Yeats. Comprehensive film cataloguing of Yeat's material only exists after 1990 at the National Film Archive.
Point not to be lost and left as a personal reflection: Image research turned out to be a real chicken-and-egg situation. Until the content was written, specific images to illustrate the content could not be identified. I feel that the way to approach multimedia design is the same way as in film production. Start with a strong script before going anywhere. This might be achieved by either having a strong idea carried by the designer who is also the content writer, or making sure that the content writer is contracted to actually sit down and write scripts before employing the asset researcher to start. It proved impossible to force the content expert into the role of writer, because we were going roun d in circles a bit trying first to get a structure. The content writer pushed the idea that, having identified the structure, the researcher would be relied on to write the scripts, but, if we had gone about it that way, we should have employed the researcher as such and given a great amount of tinme to the project. Chris reminds me that our strategy had been to let the researcher work to the content expert and write the scripts collaboratively (researcher and content writer). That should have been in the researcher's job specification, though. I feel that somewhere here is an answer to why many products in the multimedia business are weak and don't hit the mark. The truth is we floundered around a bit on this one, partly because we were vague azs to our research objectives, nobody wanted to commit to a particular point of view, many were new to the design process and yet wanted to have an influence on its direction because they felt that they had a lot to contribute but from a disciplinary point of view, not out of a feeling that we were in the process of forging new disciplines.
See, also, Yeats Database design