Digitally connecting Media Libraries of the Performing Arts

• Applicants: Dr. Thomas Engel; Daniela Poth
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 447942615

The aim of the project „Digitally Connecting Media Libraries of the Performing Arts" is to develop workflows for the publishing of metadata about audiovisual collections of the performing arts that are scattered across theatre and dance research institutes at universities, art academies or media archives in Germany and German speaking countries. The implementation of a central access point to these data via the SIS portal www.performing-arts.eu will enable the research of information on audiovisual media as well as the performances and events of the performing arts that are represented in them. In order to achieve this goal, the first planned step is to test the publication and distribution of media library metadata by two prototype partners, Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies Vienna and Media Library for Dance and Theatre Berlin, together with Specialised Information Service (SIS) Performing Arts of the University Library Frankfurt a.M.. The following are focal points of the project:- Development of workflows for aggregation, modelling, enrichment, implementation and publication of media library metadata of the performing arts- Establishment of a central access for media library metadata via the SIS portal www.performing-arts.eu- Sustainable publication and distribution of media library metadata for use in and beyond the project- Establishment of a communication structure with the professional community- Development of consulting services for media libraries and media collections of the performing arts as well as the evaluation of project resultsThe digital accessibility and further enrichment of media library metadata is a central concern of the project. Together with other project partners, whose media library metadata will be combined with the data already indexed in the SIS Portal and the data of the partners of the prototype phase. The technical implementation for online availability and publication will be examined in order to publish the largest possible amount of openly accessible media library metadata.The technical developments and best practices developed as well as the evaluation results will be permanently and freely available to theatre and dance science institutes, non-university research institutions, collections and archives for subsequent use or research. Low-threshold application scenarios of the project results will be developed as part of the openly accessible project documentation. All technical implementations will be published as open-source source code.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)