Our Standards & Guidelines

Introduction

The vision for Irish Artists' Film Index is to create a repository that encourages the discovery of visual arts-based and experimental moving image work by Irish artists and Ireland- based artists in the form of an index that is both searchable and sustainable. To achieve this it is vital to ensure that the information accumulated about these works is documented in a consistent and transparent way. This has been done by creating and employing a set of guidelines that helps to decide what needs to be documented and how this is done.

Our Method

Irish Artists' Film Index employs recommended standards closely based on Dublin Core, the recommended standard of the Digital Repository of Ireland. This is a national service for the long-term digital preservation of Ireland’s humanities, social science, and cultural heritage resources. These standards have been specifically tailored to the needs of the moving image.

To format the content of the metadata elements we have followed recommendations by PB Core and The International Federation of Film Archives (IFFA), the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and the Library of Congress (LOC).

The core information collected has been divided into four categories:

• Information to identify the moving image work:
  Title, Creator, Date, Medium, Description

• Content classification information to ease retrieval and identification of the moving image work:
  Genre, Form, Subject

• Details describing technical aspects of the moving image work:
  Language, Original Format, Duration, Aspect Ratio, Sound, Colour

• Reference and rights information to aid access to the moving image work:
  Link to work or excerpt of work, Link to Artist Website, Rights

Further Information

We currently document this information both in the form of a spreadsheet and a database, using the PB Core standard as described above. Additionally we accumulate administrative information, such as when it was collected, and notes from curators, critics and academics.

Full details about the standards and guidelines we have applied in building Irish Artists' Film Index can be found in the pdf attached below or contact us at [email protected]

Irish Artists' Film Index Guidelines Version 1.0 (pdf, 71kb)

Fifi Smith, Director of Irish Artists' Film Index

We are indebted to Anja Mahler, Digital Collections Management Officer at the IFI Irish Film Archive, for her collaboration in devising the present format that is specific to moving image and also covers experimental sub-categories.