Audiovisual media is not an island: How relating paper and media collections can enhance discoverability

Abstract

Historically, archival audiovisual media have been collected and maintained separately from other kinds of (primarily textual) archival sources. At present, researchers must often discover and manually reunite audiovisual collections and their related materials if they want to understand a broadcast not just as an audiovisual object but as a medium that relays information within a set of historical contexts (time, place, related events, etc.). This paper will include an overview of some of the factors that contribute to these scenarios, and a brief ontological demonstration of how this looks descriptively when it occurs. This paper will use examples to demonstrate how contextual paper documentation can enhance understanding of related audiovisual media collections, examine some case studies where this has been successfully implemented, then conclude with a demonstration of how new linked data approaches can potentially be applied to this scenario, allowing maximum flexibility on the backend while also providing the backbone for a user interface, which displays media and related documentation together.