3. A searchable SVT
Anna Abenius and Henrik Johansson | SVT | Sweden
The purpose of the project, A Searchable SVT, was to improve the possibilities to navigate through online program material from the perspective of the audience. Without a lot of money, the project tried to find ways to improve searchability without re-building all systems and processes. The project focused on the lack of cast and crew names online, especially for Program Acquisitions. During the last decades these names have not been stored in the archive based on the lack of re-use rights.
One important issue that complicates this project is that metadata production at SVT is a cooperation between many different departments involved in producing, curating and archiving metadata such as Archive, Communication, Acquisition, Reruns, Legal departments, Online publishing including Open archive, IT Development and production teams, in total around 17 different teams and functions.
After some research the project found out that it was quite easy to export the information from the archive system to SVT Play (our main online platform). The problem was that the whole process for applying metadata was based on archive purposes and therefore was made after a production was published. And in the case of Program Acquisition this would mean a completely new task. The challenge was mainly to change the work process and inform and convince everybody that this was the way to go forward.
The focus was to move the input of metadata from afterwards to before publication. An important member of the project was the head of SVT Play who managed to convince selected parts of the organisation (Fiction and Entertainment) about the benefits of providing this metadata before publication. This had always been a challenge for the Archive, but now when the Program Acquisition and production teams could see the need from the audience and the possibilities to reach out to a wider audience, the interest was increasingly rising.
As a result of metadata input earlier in the workflow, a lot of other developments also needs to take place. A system that already have been developed and implemented as a result of the project is ”The Cred”, an application that makes it easier to apply cast and crew to the archive system. The application is developed for the program acquisition department, but there are already plans to develop it further.
During the project we learned that many teams and functions at our company are involved and directly affected by the same metadata flow. We also learned that even if it will be a lot of new processes and needs for metadata with online publishing it’s also a very good opportunity for the archive to get better data, and to get it faster as well.
