Biz of Digital — Now Streaming (with Restrictions): Migration of Audio/Video Content from CONTENTdm to Digital Commons

By Michelle Emanuel (Head of Metadata and Digital Initiatives, Professor, University of Mississippi Libraries, P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677; Phone: 662-915-1360) <memanuel@olemiss.edu>

Column Editor: Michelle Flinchbaugh (Digital Scholarship Services Librarian, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250; Phone: 410-455-3544) <flinchba@umbc.edu>

In October 2018, the University of Mississippi Libraries began migration of its digital collections from a locally hosted instance of CONTENTdm (CDM) to the cloudbased Digital Commons (DC). The decision to migrate the collections was made after notification from OCLC that our version of CDM would no longer be supported starting in 2019, but the decision to combine our existing digital collections across multiple formats with our new institutional repository, all using the same platform, was made for both practical and financial reasons. We chose a subscription service, DC, instead of an open-source platform, in part, because of the consulting services and technical support included with the annual fee. We also found their new feature of streaming media with unlimited storage — which thankfully launched within the first year of our subscription — especially appealing. But the migration of our audio and video collections have not been without challenges. Unexpected limitations within the DC platform — in particular, learning that IP restrictions only applied to physical downloads — required that we rethink our access policies while still honoring the original wishes of donors in an age with new technologies. In the process of providing streaming A/V content that previously had only been available as downloadable files, we also realized that we could take advantage of the migration to reconsider the collections’ arrangement within DC, thereby solving a few discoverability issues.

The migration of digital collections from CDM to DC was completed by a team that included the Head of Metadata and Digital Initiatives and a Library Specialist, with frequent input from our Collection Applications Developer who was able to manipulate CDM files into new formats as needed by using a Python script. There were 14 collections including audio/visual content of the 83 collections scheduled for the migration project, representing hundreds of files. Our first audio/video collections to migrate were the ones without any content restrictions, such as oral histories and home movies. Working with the appropriate archivists in each collection area, we have organized our video files into multiple structures, divided by relevant categories such as date range or recording type, to facilitate viewing for patrons. Though CDM featured facets in the sidebar, they were difficult to navigate, with a limited display. The granularity of the CDM display meant that the user often had to click-through several pages to see what the various options even were.

See [Image 1: homemovie_cdm_landing] and [Image 2: homemovie_cdm_list] shown above.

When migrated to DC, series structures were created for the family names and for the type of film originally used, in case a researcher is looking for 8mm film instead of 16mm, or is looking for the films of a particular family.

See [Image 3: homemovie_egrove_comm] and [Image 4: homemovie_egrove_super8] on the following page.

Because the digital objects were so large, and were stored on a series of shared servers, we chose to batch upload the metadata for each of the collections, then attach the individual object one by one. It was a time-intensive process, but avoided the time-out issues we had experienced with our early attempts at migrating large files (that we have since resolved), and allowed us to also attach any other associated files at the same time such as transcripts or video logs, which cannot be attached via batch upload. The vast majority of our A/V collections, however, have content restrictions and therefore cannot be made openly available.

The collections with access restrictions mostly fell into two categories: those from our Blues Archive, and those from our Modern Political Archives. In the Blues Archive, the restrictions were mostly based on the copyright issues of music recordings. One unusual collection, combining performance with oral history, is the Alan Lomax Collection. Through a long-standing partnership with the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), our archive has been one of several allowed to provide access to 747 digital research copies of recordings made by folk historian Alan Lomax of blues musicians between 1959-1960, with the stipulation that any user be onsite, within our building. When the collection was in CDM, access was provided based on the IP address of the user, and limited to the confines of the Archives department. This arrangement predated the concept of streaming video, but the ACE has since stipulated that unrestricted streaming access not be allowed. Therefore, the challenge has been to find a way to provide streaming access, to satisfy patron preferences but with restrictions. Likewise, in our Modern Political Archives, several collections also have copyright issues, but some of the others include sensitive content. For example, the Trent Lott Collection features hundreds of videos produced by the former Senate Majority Leader over the span of his 34-year tenure in both the United States House of Representatives and Senate. The freely available video content varies, from campaign ads, important committee meetings and hearings originally broadcast on C-SPAN, and “Congress Today” which later became “Capitol Week,” a long-running weekly interview series recorded to keep the Mississippi constituency informed of Washington events and policies. Most of the restricted content in the Lott collection consists of interviews of the Senator by various media outlets, such as the “Big Three” networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) and cable television like CNN, that would require permissions to post online. Other collections in the MPA have restricted content because a speaker is