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Abstract:
In less than ten years, broadcasting has been completely transformed from an analog media to a production and distribution environment that is digital from end-to-end. Early in the transition, the public broadcasting system recognized the need for a single, unified metadata schema able to deliver digital content across multiple platforms. The Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary Project (PBMD), comprised of representatives from both public radio and public television, was convened by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2001 and spent several years analyzing metadata standards and collecting user requirements. PBCore v1.0, based in large part on Dublin Core, was released in 2005, and since then, it has been widely adopted not only by broadcasters, but also by media archives as the preferred scheme for descriptive and technical metadata. During several years of dormancy, PBCore was maintained by a loyal group of users, but with the planning of the new American Archive project, CPB is once again supporting PBCore with a release of 2.0 scheduled by the end of 2010. Based on an expanding community of user institutions, PBCore is proving to be very valuable in meeting its original goal as a standard for rich media metadata that is extensible, scalable, flexible and easy to understand.
