Metadata Co-op FAQ : PBS Software Development

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ROLE OF THE PRODUCER

As a producer, what kind of metadata should we be thinking of including?

As a producer, it's important to be part of your organization's metadata strategy (if you are affiliated with the station that will be distributing your content). If you are an independent producer, your contacts at PBS, APT, NETA, or the appropriate station will let you know what information they need, but you can see what the priorities will probably be by looking at the Required and Highly Recommended fields laid out in the Co-op's recommended Metadata Model.

Each organization will have to figure out what workflow is best for them, but consider, for example, your role in providing metadata for the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) (see below), which should get published much sooner in the content distribution life-cycle than, for example, program listings do.

For now, be open to talking through the metadata strategy with others at your organization or with the stations or distributors you work with, and start taking steps to get the information (all of which you already have) organized in a way that will let you provide it sooner than you are currently. Making sure your program is listed in EIDR, on your distributor's website, and elsewhere as early as possible will give your content a competitive advantage when it comes to content discovery.

How does EIDR keep track of international programs that may have original broadcasts overseas and US premieres through PBS?

EIDR does not allow duplicates and it is a disambiguation service. If a show already exists in the Registry, you can tag the record with your organization's House Number as an alternate identifier. As a rule of thumb, EIDR requires that each Abstract Record (Series, Season, Episode or One-Time-Only) reflect the commissioning Distributor or Broadcaster and the initial mode (Web, TV, etc) to which the Creative Work was released to the public. If your station acquires a Program:
- EIDR will flag the record with your House Number.
- EIDR will allow you to create EDIT and MANIFESTATION records to represent your acquisition.
- Only if you "recut" the acquisition, can you create your own Abstract Record with the episode class of "recut."

Is there a fee to register with EIDR?

All member stations are included in the umbrella registration fee paid to EIDR by PBS, so no, there is no cost to member stations to register their station or their content with EIDR.

What metadata systems or platforms are stations using?

The Metadata Co-Op focuses on sharing best practices to ready stations for today's metadata-driven content discovery engines. While tools are important, we have found that people are hesitant to embrace a tool if they do not TRUST the data within it, so the first step in any metadata journey is to focus on the metadata rather than the tool.

Start your metadata journey by identifying how high-value metadata flows into the organization. Then determine which employees need the data. Next, inventory which fields are published to TV, web and social platforms. Lastly, store the metadata into a central repository so that a "single source of truth" is accessible to ALL. That central repository can be a spreadsheet, an Access database, or whatever tool you decide is needed for your purposes, but ultimately the metadata itself is more important than the specific tool you choose.

Most of us work with ProTrack for broadcast and Media Manager for online video. Is the Metadata Co-op aligned with Myers on metadata?

For public media content to be discoverable and findable in today's multi-platform, content-saturated world, we have to adopt industry-wide metadata standards. The Co-op's Metadata Model incorporates EIDR, the unique ID embraced by virtually all global M&E players, and it incorporates other metadata standards dominant in our industry (MediaLabs for media file metadata and Gracenote for descriptive program metadata). By design, the Co-op's Metadata Model is technology-agnostic. Any technology vendor can access the Model and either adopt or align their own systems to it so as to ensure interoperability.

In the course of its work with the sIX Interconnection project, which leverages the Co-op Metadata Model and vocabulary, Myers has indicated that they plan to make EIDR IDs visible within ProTrack. Stations and other public media content creators should, however, contact Myers and other vendors directly with questions about how specific systems align with industry standards and best practices.

I am wondering about "ownership" of metadata and the ability to get this out of proprietary systems, especially if the metadata is transformed.

This is why EIDR is critical; Listing Provider metadata is proprietary, but EIDR is a non-profit registry and once you have registered with EIDR you can edit your metadata at any time. That metadata is then visible to anyone that wants to leverage it through an open access website. Because EIDR is a disambiguation service, only a minimal baseline of metadata is input into EIDR -- just enough to ensure that the program (or version of the program) is absolutely unique. Note that rich descriptive metadata such as synopsis, genre, and keywords are not captured in EIDR.

Is there any cost to attend the Metadata Co-op Webinars?
None whatsoever!
Should I take the webinars in a specific order?
We're leveraging the Crawl-Walk-Run methodology and we are offering all of the webinars continuously, which means that we're breaking the information up so that you can learn at your own pace, a bit at a time, and start whenever it's convenient for you. So yes, you will want to attend the sessions in order, especially at the beginning.

Most station and/or producer teams will want to take the current roster of webinars in this order. Whenever in doubt about what webinars are available, when or what session to take next, visit metadata.pbs.org/training.
- Metadata 101: An Introduction
- Metadata 102: A Metadata Model for Content Discovery
- Content creators / producers will next want to take Content Discovery for Content Creators (though anyone may attend).
- Once you've completed those webinars, you are ready to start learning more about the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) in particular, and you should sign up for An Introduction to EIDR.
- If you decide you would like to start registering content with EIDR, complete the interest form here and you'll receive a link to the self-guided Using the EIDR Registry course.