Minnesota Public Radio

How we use PBCore

We use some PBCore elements, drawing from those in existence at the time we designed our database, some eight years ago. Once the system was launched that essentially froze our element structure. We haven’t had technical support to make major changes. PBCore itself has been in flux and it hasn’t been practical to alter our database to reflect the frequent revisions, or go back retrospectively and edit records. We’ve made some minor changes, primarily in controlled vocabulary with PBCore updates, but overall once our system was in place, that was it. We were early adopters and the way we use the elements reflects this.

Why we use PBCore

The advantage of PBCore is that it adds media and technical metadata particular to broadcasting, a standard that doesn’t exist with another schema. We were looking at standards to incorporate into the design of our in-house database. PBCore was in the developmental stages at that time, and was one of the standards we reviewed. In fact, MPR was part of an early group that made suggestions about element structure (some of which were adopted) and did initial PBCore testing. We incorporated as much as we could that seemed practical at that time. Some elements we chose were later supplanted with local variation (e.g. rights).

Contact

Josh Kubasta
Archive Manager
Minnesota Public Radio
archive@mpr.org

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