The Pilot European Image Processing Archive
Document Standards
Conversion Issues and Tools
Educating Users
Aims of the Workshop
The workshop set out with the following aims:
- to look at the range of file formats for multimedia, both formal standards and de facto standards
- to consider where these fit together and where there are overlaps of functionality and where gaps exist
- to consider defining a "Which" type guide to advise the community on what formats are appropriate and where and how they fit together
- to decide whether a report (or reports) advising the community on file formats is needed and to specify sections to be commissioned (with participants being able to "sign up" for sections)
- to develop advice for various committees, groups and services in UK Higher Education (e.g. Libraries Review Committee, dataset services, TLTP projects)
- to advise the JISC Standards Working Group on which standards should be targets for receiving travel and subsistence funding for delegates to attend meetings.
Support Initiative for Multimedia Applications
The workshop was held as part of the SIMA project which is designed to dovetail with AGOCG activities.
As part of its concern to underpin the provision of computer graphics, visualization and multimedia, AGOCG held a workshop in December 1993 to address the issues of "Multimedia in Higher Education: Networking and Portability" the results of which are published as AGOCG Technical Report 24. This workshop tied in with the proposal from AGOCG for the Support Initiative for Multimedia Applications which has now been funded by the JISC New Technologies Initiative. The New Technologies Initiative has funded projects in a range of areas which reflect new areas of technology and their application. The projects are concerned with demonstrating the use of new technology to the higher education community through example, setting up services, training, and dissemination of good practice.
The main elements of the Support Initiative for Multimedia Applications (SIMA) are:
- a Support Officer who will offer help to the community, run courses, survey activities nationally, disseminate information about national initiative and other deliverables, and be a source of information for the community Sue Cunningham of the University of Manchester has been appointed to this post
- workshops
- a series of evaluations leading to reports and recommendations
- a series of pilot projects
It aims to build on the model of AGOCG which will act as a steering group for the initiative. The projects in the first year will implement some of the recommendations of the AGOCG workshop. These recognise that multimedia is a technology which will be vital to many areas in higher education, yet the main developments will be industry-led. In higher education we need to be looking to support people using the new technology and to assist them in setting up an infrastructure with appropriate hardware and software.
Graphics Multimedia
Virtual Environments Visualisation
Contents
