JISC

This pilot project, which brought together the British Film Institute, the British Universities Film and Video Council and JISC, was the first move by national agencies to test delivery of moving images and the implications of scaling up to a widely available national service for UK Higher Education.

Executive summary

The pilot project succeeded in the majority of its goals and presented a number of interesting opportunities for the HE community.

Findings

Content

The clearance of intellectual property rights for delivery of moving images online in HE/FE is a key issue. The project found that:

• materials, though apparently similar, may present radically different intellectual property rights clearance issues
• content selection procedures will be an important factor in developing a high quality online service for higher/further education and research. Quality thresholds for selection may be technical- or content-based and these criteria may vary radically according to subject discipline
• unless materials are made available for a ‘reasonable’ period, perhaps a minimum of five years, lecturing staff will not fully integrate them into their teaching
• no rights clearance fees were paid for use of the materials released during the network pilot because, for the limited period of the project, all rights owners agreed to support the pilot. Even so, the administrative process of access and release of material was time-consuming and expensive
• a fundamental prerequisite of any future service will be a thorough understanding of the complexity of copyright clearance, and IPR issues
• the quality of delivery demanded by users differed according to their subject discipline(s)
• negotiations continued throughout the life of the project with regard to contracts and indemnities required to deliver the material

Technology

The consideration of delivery technologies raised a number of key points:

• in the short term there is no one solution which should be proposed for the entire HE/FE community. Variations in existing infrastructure and connectivity determine that different sites require different technological solutions
• the high speed of technological advance in this field is a factor which will influence the selection of the best solution for a given situation
• ‘quality of service’ is a key factor throughout the delivery chain, from server to client, at every scale from local to national
• delivery across Super JANET is feasible but will require a considerable increase in bandwidth for widespread use
• moving image material requires large amounts of storage and, as such, for the foreseeable future only a relatively small percentage of the material can be made available online at any one time

Pedagogy

• The project only looked at the potential use of moving image materials in three sample subject disciplines. It is noted that moving image content is used in most subject disciplines to support teaching and research
• The constraints of the pilot project, with regard to the small amount of content released, meant that it was not always possible to fully explore issues of pedagogy

Points for Further Action

Content

The selection of quality content will be important since, as a result of storage limitations (in the medium term), only a relatively small amount can be made available at any one time. To support teaching, the ability to access key sequences is more important than providing access to complete archives.

However, the needs of researchers, especially those working in media-related disciplines, will fuel the demand for access to large quantities of a range of material.

• All content selected should be cleared for widespread use within the HE/FE community and for possible inclusion as part of the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER). Mechanisms need to be sought which make best use of existing activities and knowledge in this area
• There is a large amount of moving image content already used within the community. This should be identified and, where possible, made accessible online
• A model agreement for the clearance of moving image materials should be eveloped to act as a platform for future large-scale clearance negotiations both inside and outside the HE/FE community
• The HE/FE sector and the developing DNER will need to address the need for authorisation and access control throughout the community to protect the rights of content owners and users. There is a need to consider mechanisms for charging

Technology

Network bandwidth will have to be increased and ‘quality of service’ controls put in place. This applies at local, regional and national levels. Moving image delivery requires the implementation of new network architectures for high quality delivery.

• On-going research should be undertaken to investigate emerging digitisation and delivery technologies. Case studies describing the application of technologies in situ would also be useful to establish best practices
• For successful integration into the DNER, further work needs to be carried out to define appropriate metadata formats relating to moving images. Support should also be available to conform existing data into these structures. Pedagogy
• Further work should be carried out to identify best practices for the use of moving images online in higher/further education – including integration with other teaching material.

Organisation

• Activities in this field should be co-ordinated to satisfy local goals in selecting technical solutions and national goals in creating a useful content base, which will integrate with the DNER

 

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