The TIB AV-Portal addresses all scientific disciplines, with a special focus on science and technology. Videos are published in the AV-Portal in a science-compliant manner. They are openly and permanently available, long-term archived and have a digital object identifier (DOI). They can be cited like conventional publications—even down to the second—and they can be linked to further information such as research data or NameIDs. In addition, videos are legally clarified and are mostly reusable under Creative Commons licenses. The metadata is described in RDF and is made available for download as Linked Open Data. Finally, videos are provided free of advertising and in compliance with data protection laws.
The AV-Portal homepage as displayed on a tablet
The AV-Portal uses a range of automatic video analyses: Shot boundary detection splits the video into its individual scenes. Automated speech recognition converts spoken language into searchable text. Video OCR recognizes text on slides and text overlays. Visual concept detection labels visual concepts. Named-entity linking links textual metadata to a controlled vocabulary (Integrated Authority File of the German National Library, DBpedia, Library of Congress Subject Headings). Searches use semantic relations of named-entities—alternative terms, translations—to improve recall. There is a German and an English graphical user interface.
At TIB, various teams are involved in getting the service up and running: Software is hosted by the IT department; metadata managers maintain the metadata; lawyers take care of rights clearance; DOI service assigns permanent digital identifiers’ the long-term archiving team takes care of the preservation of the videos; customer service answers customer inquiries; a scrum team of 6 people works on the technical development, video acquisition pro-actively acquires videos, a community builder organizes co-operations and prepares content for scientific institutions, a conference recording service records conferences; and a research group trained the image recognition. This makes the TIB AV-Portal the core of various services around scientific videos.
We have a video tutorial for a compact overview of the AV-Portal and a full explanation of the services and activities of TIB around scientific videos on our website.
The AV-Portal has various co-operations in place with scientific institutions, societies and journals. For example, we host videos of the OA publisher Copernicus and the German Physical Society (DPG). If you are interested in a co-operation with several benefits, please contact us: https://av.tib.eu/contact
We believe that providing a reliable infrastructure for publishing scientific videos holds great potential for researchers and libraries as essential supporters and disseminators for research that should not be left to big commercial players such as YouTube.