Organisation of Multimedia Resources

Citation

Hider, P. (1999), "Organisation of Multimedia Resources", Library Management, Vol. 20 No. 7, pp. 401-405. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.1999.20.7.401.4

This textbook summarises and explains the options currently available to those wishing to store and retrieve online multimedia. Burke intends the student not merely to take note of these options, but to think about which should be applied in which situations. She thus asks the student to tackle such problems as the meaning of “work” and “item” in relation to Internet retrieval, and the subject analysis of visual and musical materials. The questions at the end of each of the earlier chapters are particularly useful in that they are generic ones that can be used for any number of case studies, not only the ones suggested in the book. The further reading includes Web pages, and the end‐of‐chapter summaries are clear.

It is no easy task (perhaps an impossible one) to write a textbook on a subject which is still finding its feet. Burke has explained the “principles” well, but most are principles of information retrieval in general, not of multimedia in particular. It may well be that the multimedia environment has exacerbated the problems, but the solutions are still based on the same old principles. While the book’s theoretical emphasis, particularly in the first half of the book, makes for thoughtful students, this is at the expense of the specific topic which the book is supposed to cover. Only in the second half do we look deeply into the particular problems of retrieving visual and audio information, and of the way such information can now be stored and represented electronically. Fortunately, however, the two chapters on visual and audio information can be read independently, and both provide fairly good introductions to the particular issues posed by the different media.

What is most disappointing about this book is not its over‐emphasis on general principles, but its under‐emphasis on the fundamental aspect of multimedia – integration. Burke’s own definition of multimedia is “the integrated storage, retrieval and display of words, numbers, images and sounds by a computer system”. How are the different ways of retrieving words, numbers, images and sounds to be reconciled in the media‐converged computer environment? After the two separate chapters on visual and audio information, we get only a brief look at the future. Even basic forms of multimedia such as video are barely mentioned. While it is certainly true that the ways in which a retrieval system should handle the new multimedia documents downloaded by our computers have yet to be fully worked out, a book on the subject really must address it more head on, and should focus more on these new multimedia documents, as well as on the various media of which they may consist.

For those interested in the organising and cataloguing of online information resources, this book may be useful if you have little knowledge of bibliographic control. Those contemplating digitising their collection of graphics or sound recordings might profitably consult the chapters on visual and audio information.