The new TIB|AV Portal by the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) in Hannover went online on 29 April 2014. More than 1,800 quality-tested scientific films from the realms of engineering, architecture, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science are now available at av.getinfo.de. “Our AV Portal offers optimised access to scientific films from the fields of science and technology. Computer animations and recordings of lectures and conferences can now be published, located and made available on a permanent basis as easily as textual documents,” stated Uwe Rosemann, Director of TIB. The AV Portal combines the easy, legally watertight publishing of scientific films with professional quality testing, and preserves cultural heritage thanks to digital preservation. TIB’s Competence Centre for Non-Textual Materials (KNM) started developing the AV Portal in cooperation with the Hasso-Plattner-Institut (HPI), the University Centre of Excellence in Systems Engineering affiliated to the University of Potsdam, in July 2011. Following the successful completion of the development phase, the video platform has now been launched for practical use. TIB’s AV Portal has a clear added value compared to other video portals. Automated video analysis with scene, speech, text and image recognition offers an innovative method of searching for films. The search results are connected to new knowledge by linking the data semantically.
Innovative search in scientific films
The automatic, content-based provision of individual videos at the segment level enables users to search in a targeted, content-based manner: a visual table of contents provides a quick overview of the film content, facilitating access to individual film sequences in particular segments. Spoken and written language within the video (such as voice-overs, lecture slides or logos) is automatically recorded and can be searched for directly. Based on visual features in the film – such as colour distribution – each video is automatically assigned to a genre (such as an interview, a recording of a lecture or an experiment). By adding semantic information gained from video analysis to the data, explorative navigation of the stock can be performed, enabling connections between different AV media to be identified and searches to be conducted using synonyms, keywords and sub-categories. The wealth of visual material stored on the AV Portal will steadily grow over the months and years ahead. As the number of videos stored on the AV Portal grows, the results of automatic provision will continue to improve. The scientific films will be connected to additional information such as digital full texts and research information via TIB’s portal GetInfo, widening the search space considerably. Each video segment will also be given a digital object identifier, DOI for short, ensuring its clear, permanent citability. Video sequences can therefore now be cited as easily as texts. The AV Portal offers users many advantages, such as innovative search, the possibility to access and cite individual segments, the ability to download, license and order films, and cross-media search.
Do you produce scientific films?
Would you like your AV media to be visible on an interregional and interinstitutional basis, and easily available for research purposes? We will help you to make your videos from the areas of engineering, architecture, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and physics available long-term. Producers of scientific films can simply upload their video to the AV Portal free of charge. Once the quality of the video has been checked, it is published in a legally watertight manner; indexed according to international standards; transcribed; digitally preserved; and given a DOI name. This ensures that the video is easy to find.
Please contact TIB at: KNM(at)tib.uni-hannover.de
About TIB
The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) in Hannover is Germany’s National Library for all areas of engineering as well as architecture, chemistry, information technology, mathematics and physics. It primarily supplies the national and international research community and industry with literature and information. TIB has an excellent collection of fundamental and highly specialised literature of science and technology. As the world’s largest specialised library in its fields, TIB is responsible for maintaining the knowledge recorded and for providing the latest information for research and development, both now and in the future, irrespective of the time and the place. GetInfo is TIB’s portal for specialist and research information in science and technology. More than 160 million data sets are currently available. A variety of knowledge objects such as audiovisual media, 3D models and research data are integrated in GetInfo.
