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Digital Bedrock, WGBH Team on PBCore Cataloging Tool

Digital preservation specialist Digital Bedrock and media company WGBH have teamed up to launch a new, open-source cataloguing tool, the PBCore Cataloguing Tool.

Developed by Digital Bedrock for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting’s PBCore Development and Training Project, PBCore’s metadata standard is used by studios, broadcasters, producers and archivists to better organize and catalog TV, film, and radio properties.

“We are thrilled to have contributed to WGBH’s project that will facilitate adoption of the PBCore metadata standard,” said Linda Tadic, founder and CEO of Digital Bedrock. “It can be used by broadcasters, studios, archives, even individual producers to help them organize their assets. If you don’t know what you have, it can’t be used or monetized. Providing an easy to use tool based on a recognized standard should alleviate any perceived complexities in doing that critical work.”

PBCore is designed to support the creation, editing and export of moving image-related inventory metadata as PBCore records, and touts a user-friendly data entry interface. Featuring full support of PBCore elements and attributes, the tool aims to make creating valid PBCore records similar to filling out a spreadsheet. The metadata created with the tool can be shared with organizations and imported into other systems, with records able to be exported as XML or CSV files.

Along with the launch of the PBCore Cataloging Tool comes a revamped PBCore website, geared toward supporting the efforts of the PBCore Development and Training Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. New features include PBCore Spreadsheet Templates that are designed to capture PBCore metadata in an easily read format; and PBCore Validator, which provides best practice recommendations for PBCore XML documents. For more information, visit pbcore.org.

In other Digital Bedrock news, Tadic has recently been elected to the National Digital Stewardship (NDSA) Coordinating Committee, where she’ll help facilitate discussions and projects between disparate organizations, including in the academic, non-profit, for-profit, government, and creative communities, all around the preservation of digital content and the different methodologies and technologies being used. Click here for more information.