Descriptive Metadata for Television

Introduction

Moving image technology dates back well over a century and sound recording longer than that. It is possible today to watch clips from 19th-century wars or listen to Tennyson himself reading “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Television is the new kid on the block by comparison, with surviving recordings dating from the 1920s (recorded on shellac discs) or “high-definition” 405 line recordings from the 1930s (recorded on film). We can still find these old recordings, and we still know what they are, who made them, why, and when because they are carefully cataloged and preserved in libraries or archives. Librarians would point out that this has been their work, not just with audiovisual material but with every medium that has captured ...