THE WGBH MEDIA LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES ASSESSMENT FOR SCHOLARLY USE FUNDED BY THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION December 31, 2007 Principle Investigators Karen Cariani Mary Ide Project Archivists Stephen Kharfen Barbara Macleod Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary ................................................................................................................1 2. Introduction ............................................................................................................................4 3. Process and Procedures ...........................................................................................................6 4. Dimensions of the Assessment ..............................................................................................16 5. Television Series...................................................................................................................18 6. Television Stand-Alone Programs .........................................................................................36 7. Radio Series..........................................................................................................................44 8. WGBH Forum Network........................................................................................................53 9. Preservation Activities...............................................................................................................54 10. Case Studies........................................................................................................................55 11. Evaluation Experiences and the Assessment Tool as a Model..............................................60 12. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................62 Appendices A. Glossary of Terms................................................................................................................67 B. Sample Assessment Tool Records .......................................................................................71 C. Advisory Groups.......................................................................................................................84 D. Sample MARS Database Records ........................................................................................86 E. Policies and Procedures ........................................................................................................91 F. Numerical Scoring System..................................................................................................100 G. Status of Audio-Visual Formats .........................................................................................101 H. Data Summary, Television Series by Decade......................................................................102 I. Data Summary, Television Series by MERLOT......................……………............................106 J. Top Tier WGBH Programs…………………………………………………………………..109 K. Data Summary, Television Stand-Alones by Decade..........................................................110 L. Data Summary, Television Stand-Alones by MERLOT ......................................................114 M. Data Summary, Radio Series by Decade............................................................................117 N. Data Summary, Radio Series by MERLOT…………………………………………………121 O. Preservation Title List……………………………………………………………………….123 Acknowledgements We want to express our gratitude to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for making this project possible. Our deepest appreciation also goes to all those at WGBH who contributed to it: Fred Barzyk Jordan Berson Karen Colbron Nancy Dillon Jennie Hendrickson Keith Luf Christopher McNeice Jeff Nelson Peter Pinch Paul Plutnicki Ronn Smith Jon Solins Leah Weisse Cynthia Zollinger We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to the Assessment and Faculty Advisor Groups for their involvement in this project. 1. Executive Summary The WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) Assessment for Scholarly Use project was designed to achieve two goals: to determine the educational value of WGBH’s extensive archival collection for higher education research and instruction, and to accomplish this by designing an assessment instrument for surveying audio-visual collections that could be shared with other institutions. At the start of this project, the MLA housed approximately 29,000 programs with 570,000 related production elements and documents, numbers that suggest both the potential worth of this collection to the academic community and the complexity of evaluating its educational value. The study approached this challenge by (1) creating a framework and tool for collecting information about the archived programs, (2) assembling a detailed composite portrait of the archival collection, and (3) modeling potential approaches to analyzing and employing the data compiled through this work. This process has enabled WGBH to identify the depth of materials associated with each title and track the remarkable range of academic subjects and interests reflected through over fifty years of broadcast programming. The growth of the MLA collection has been strongly shaped by WGBH’s organizational, production, and technological history. WGBH was founded in 1951, and consequently archived programs extend back into the 1950s. Unfortunately a fire in 1961 devastated WGBH’s holdings of programs and documents, destroying much of this early history. While the introduction of videotape increased the potential for storing programs and production elements, in keeping with industry practice WGBH erased many of these programs because reusing videotape was cost effective. However, archival and preservation principles and practices were implemented over time and were institutionalized with the formal establishment of the WGBH Archives in 1979, the first public television archival collection that adhered to professional principles and standards. WGBH’s archive now holds over half a million assets. In order to present a detailed picture of the MLA collection, project staff first sorted the materials for assessment according to the following categories: (1) by media (television, radio, and Web); (2) by the program categories of stand-alone (i.e. programs completed in a single production) and series (including limited series productions and titles produced on an ongoing basis); (3) by decade of creation; and (4) by major subject discipline. This process of differentiation is based on the fact that the assessment tool scores elements that may be rare in one category but common in another. For example, few audio-visual and documentation elements survive from the 1950s, whereas thousands are produced for many programs today. Similarly, radio production does not result in the same quantity of associated audio-visual and documentation elements as television does. By employing such divisions, the project staff worked to ensure that programs with educational value would not be overlooked. Similarly, sorting by topic area allows programs to be viewed within their own specific subject area contexts. It would challenge logic to compare music and history programs that have been produced using different production strategies and methods, nor would it make sense to rank subject areas against one another. After identifying and categorizing the master programs and production elements, MLA staff employed the assessment tool to collect the information necessary to determine educational value. The assessment tool is comprised of thirty-two questions, and is contained within a database created to serve both as the survey instrument and the data repository. Each program’s WGBH MLA Assessment for Scholarly Use 1 educational value is derived from four key factors: physical access (composed of media and production documentation assets), intellectual access (reflecting the quality of the program’s pre- existing metadata), rights information (including the documentation available about the use of the program and its component assets), and content information (including evaluations of the program’s significance and reception, as well as additional attributes such as target audience, personal names, and chronological focus). Because this project aimed to assess the archive for the purposes of higher education online use, it was particularly key to categorize content according to academic discipline whenever possible. Consequently, the assessment tool also employs a taxonomy developed by Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT; www.merlot.org), a free and open peer-reviewed online resource for higher education learning materials supported by major colleges, universities, and statewide higher education systems. MERLOT categorizes content in seven disciplines (Arts, Business, Education, Humanities, Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology, and Social Sciences) as well as fifty-four subject areas within these disciplines (for example, Biology, History, and Music). Additional, more specific content categories are provided by Library of Congress subject headings. As a result of these classification systems, the assessment tool sorts and identifies titles within the framework of higher education. A numerical system scores titles based on quantifiable data elements, and the assessment’s database structure allows users to cross-reference criteria such as date, subject matter, or academic discipline to tailor ranked