Toolkit

To contribute videos to the NJVid Commons, fill out and mail us these two required forms with your videos:
Deposit Agreement
Metadata Deposit Form [MS Word]

Send your videos and two forms to this address:

RE: NJVid
Isaiah Beard
Scholarly Communication Center, Alexander Library Rutgers University
169 College Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Other useful documents:

NJVid Codec & Settings Spec Sheet pdf
Related Rights Guidance pdf
Rights Decision Tree pdf
Sample Deed of Gift ms word
Sample Nonexclusive License ms word
Sample Release Form for Participants ms word

Jump to:

    How to Contribute Videos to the NJVid Commons

      Quick Reference Checklist
      Selecting Videos to Contribute
      Assessing Physical Condition of Videos
      Determining the Rights Status and Obtaining Permissions
      Video Delivery
      Adding Metadata
    How to Produce your own Videos
    Additional References
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How to Contribute Videos to the NJVid Commons

These guidelines walk you through the process of contributing locally-owned videos to the NJVid Commons.  A quick reference checklist is offered first and then comprehensive, step-by-step instructions for those who need further assistance.  All NJVid users have access to videos in the Commons.  Before proceeding, please note that the NJVid Commons accepts contributions primarily from educational institutions such as K-20 schools, museums, libraries and historical societies.  Please Contact Us if you are a private citizen without professional affiliation who wishes to contribute videos.

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Quick Reference Checklist

You can use this checklist as a quick reference for determining whether you can contribute videos to the NJVid Commons:

Make sure to answer YES to all of the above.  If you have any questions, please follow the in-depth guidelines below.

Thank you for contributing to the NJVid Commons!

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Selecting Videos to Contribute

  1. Choose a Compatible Video

    We accept videos in the following videotape formats: VHS, S-VHS, mini-DV, DVCAM, and digital formats including DVD, HDV, and other digital files lacking Digital Rights Management.  We will announce support for additional tape formats when ready.  If you want to contribute digital files, please refer to our NJVid Codec & Settings Spec Sheet, which details the technical settings at which we encode analog materials.  If the files you wish to contribute are not up to our specifications, please realize that this will hinder our ability to optimally preserve your videos and will limit the picture and audio quality of any future derivations we will make from your videos’ archival source files for preservation and access purposes.  DVD or original uncompressed source video files are preferred.

    We do not accept film materials.  You must transfer all film materials to video or a digital format before submitting them to NJVid.  There are many film transfer services available to choose from, one of which is Javanni Digital Video (www.perfectpopcorn.com), which William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ uses to conduct its film-to-tape transfers.
  2. Choose a Video that is Educational and Enlightening

    All videos contributed to NJVid must have educational and research value.  They should expand the pool of knowledge on a certain topic or subject matter in support of pedagogy and scholarship.
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Assessing Physical Condition of Videos

In order to avoid impairing the operation of our hardware or damaging it in any way (a deteriorated tape could fall apart, crack or corrode our equipment mid-digitization), and to ensure that all of the videos that you contribute to NJVid are physically stable and secure, we ask that you follow these basic steps of physical condition assessment.

  1. Inspect the Video for Physical Degradation

    It might be possible to triage your videos with visual inspection.  If you notice that a video is physically damaged or deteriorating, then you should not send it to us.  In fact, if the video’s content is important to you, we recommend that you contact a film or video transfer service and ask if it will restore the video or at least transfer it to new stock.

    The Association of Moving Image Archivists Web site hosts an in-depth collection of Videotape Preservation Fact Sheets (http://www.amianet.org/resources/guides/fact_sheets.pdf) that guide one through physically inspecting and caring for videos.  Fact Sheet #9 covering tape inspection is especially helpful in guiding one through the process of assessing physical condition of videotapes.  We strongly recommend that you adhere to the procedures and guidance laid out in these fact sheets so that your collection(s) may survive well into the future.
  2. Play the Video in Full and in Real Time

    By contributing a video to NJVid, you certify that you have played it back in full and in real time beforehand.  Please do not simply fast forward through it while working on something else.  Playing the video will not only help you assess its picture and audio quality, but will help you identify and record information about the content of the video as well.  If the video plays with relatively little audio/visual dropouts, strong picture and audio fidelity and does not damage your player or itself in any way, you may send it to us.
  3. Check Digital Files for Bugs and Errors

    If you wish to contribute digital files, please check them for bugs and playback errors.  Ensure that the files open and play properly on contemporary computer hardware with current software, and that they are free of viruses, spyware and other rogue programming.
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Determining the Rights Status and Obtaining Permissions

Traditionally, copyright has been one of the thorniest issues impeding online access to moving image collections.  Simply put, caretakers often do not know who owns the rights to videos in their collections.  This section gives steps for determining who owns which rights to what videos, how to go about securing rights, and how to prevent rights ambiguities from recurring.

  1. Determine the Rights Status

    You might not know if your institution has the legal authority to contribute videos to NJVid.  If so, you can use our Rights Decision Tree to make a clear determination.  Beginning with the upper leftmost rectangle, consider the question raised and, based on your response, follow the diagram to the appropriate connecting rectangle.  Repeat the process until you have reached one of the two terminal hexagons.  It will indicate what your next course of action should be.  In the event that you need to obtain and manage permissions to your videos, follow the steps below in sequence.  Otherwise, you have obtained all necessary rights via signed licenses or deeds of gift and can jump to the section below on Video Delivery.
  2. Obtain Permissions from Right Holders

    As stipulated by copyright law, generally speaking, before you can present or distribute your videos, you need to obtain permission to do so from the primary individual or group of individuals who contributed intellectual property to the videos.  The author(s) or creator(s) of the videos hold or share copyright.  Examples include guest speakers, performers and videographers.  Your videos might have related or underlying rights as well.  You must obtain signed licenses from both groups of rights holders.
    1. If your institution does not have one of its own, you can customize our Sample Nonexclusive License and use it to obtain permission from copyright holders to use a video “by any digital means,” including NJVid.  The reason we recommend that you obtain signed licenses to videos with this verbiage rather than NJVid-specific language, and the reason we recommend that you customize the sample license with your institution’s branding rather than NJVid’s, is that it will allow you to use your video in multiple digital projects rather than exclusively in NJVid.
    2. In addition to the main copyright holder(s), individuals or groups might also have underlying or related rights to a video.  Please refer to our document on Related Rights Guidance for thorough coverage of this topic.  As with copyright holders, please be sure to obtain a license from each related or underlying rights holder before contributing to NJVid.
    3. Presently or in the future, when acquiring ownership of a physical video or film from a copyright holder, you may use our Sample Deed of Gift to obtain permission from the donor to reformat the video or film, including reformatting to digital formats for use by any digital means, such as with NJVid.  As with a license, a deed of gift is a legal agreement or contract between your institution and an individual, group or organization (a rights holder, in the case of a license, and an owner of physical property, in the case of a deed of gift), not NJVid.  For this reason, we recommend that you customize and use our sample deed of gift if your institution does not have a suitable one of its own.  If your institution acquires a video from a donor who is not its sole copyright holder, you will still need to acquire a separate license from the video’s rights holder(s) before you will be able to contribute the video to NJVid.

      If your institution obtained a deed of gift to a video from its sole rights holder, you must check to see if the deed includes permission for your institution to digitally transfer, present and archive the video.  Lacking permission that encompasses reformatting, digital presentation and digital archiving, we recommend that you ask the donor to sign a license giving permission to use the video “by any digital means.”

      For more information about deeds of gift, consult the Society of American Archivists Web site: http://www.archivists.org/publications/deed_of_gift.asp.
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Video Delivery

By this point you should have ensured that your video is educational and enlightening, compatible with NJVid based on its physical or digital container format, in good physical condition, and that you have obtained in writing all necessary permissions from rights holders.  If so, you are now ready to contribute the video.

You may mail your video(s) to:

RE: NJVid
Isaiah Beard
Scholarly Communication Center, Alexander Library Rutgers University
169 College Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Make sure to include a completed Deposit Agreement in your mailing package.  By completing the Deposit Agreement, you certify that you have attained all permissions from rights holders and that you give NJEDge.Net and Rutgers University permission to digitize (if necessary), reformat, present and archive the accompanying video content based on the terms of the agreement and those established by your video’s licensor(s) and possibly your institution.

Make sure to include your return address with your mailing package so that we may return your physical materials in a timely manner.

If you have videos that you would like to hand deliver, or if you have digital videos that you wish to digitally deliver via secure FTP (e.g. using a free client such as FileZilla: http://filezilla-project.org/), Contact Us so that we can arrange delivery.  You will still need to mail us a completed Deposit Agreement.

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Adding Metadata

Metadata – literally “data about data” – is textual information used to describe a video in a number of areas, including intellectual content, container format, technical information and rights status.  This data is used to preserve your video and to make it retrievable via a browse or search at our Web site, www.njvid.net.  Metadata also contains information specific to each version of your video, plus origin information that describes the relationships between iterations of your video referred to as “provenance” (e.g. the contributed analog tape sourced an archival master file, which sourced a QuickTime streaming file).  By recording metadata, we will be able to retrace our steps if we ever need to generate new presentation files from a file identified as your video’s archival source.

Metadata is also used to facilitate browsing and searching for videos.  The text that you enter as metadata is indexed so that you can use that same text in a search to locate the video.

Currently NJVid provides two methods for entering metadata: fill out our Metadata Deposit Form and mail it to us with your video and signed Deposit Agreement, or enter metadata directly into the Workflow Management System.

  1. Metadata Deposit Form

    Please use our Metadata Deposit Form to specify as much information about your video as you can. The more thorough your responses are, the better we will be able to service your video. Once finished, include it in your mailing package with your video and Deposit Agreement. We will enter the metadata for you into our Workflow Management System.

  2. Workflow Management System

    Metadata is entered into the Workflow Management System (WMS).  Each contributor to NJVid is assigned an account in the WMS with which a “collection manager” appointed at each contributing institution can log in and add metadata for each video contributed by that institution.  Once your collection manager grows comfortable with entering metadata directly into the WMS on a regular basis, you will no longer have to mail us a completed Metadata Deposit Form.  Using our WMS User Manual as a guide, we recommend that your collection manager gradually build up his/her acumen for operating the WMS before ceasing to use the Metadata Deposit Form.  Please note that you must fill out the fields marked with a red asterisk in the WMS.  You may Contact Us for assistance with adding metadata.

    You probably have noticed that at the NJVid Commons you can browse videos by subject matter.  You can assign subject(s) to your contributed videos by making appropriate selections from the dropdown box of the Subject metadata field within the WMS.  You can choose multiple subjects for your videos.  NJVid has predominantly adopted the Moving Image Collections’ listing of subjects for moving images.  On its web site, MIC (http://mic.loc.gov/public_portal/pub_subjglos.htm) provides an explanation and scope for each subject for your reference.  NJVid offers two additional subjects to choose from:

    Biography – Materials that cover an individual’s life, accomplishments or contributions to human history.  Includes materials that give an account in biographical form of organizations, institutions, corporations and animals.  Includes historical events resulting from human endeavors or circumstances.  For materials covering groups of individuals, select instead Society.

    Languages and literature     – Materials pertaining to human languages and other forms of communication, including materials pertaining to written or printed works such as poetry, novels and essays.  For works that are biographical in nature, select instead Biography.

If you have a MARC record for your contributed video, you can import it directly into the WMS to automatically fill out certain metadata fields.  However, you still will have to manually enter metadata into some fields of the WMS since the MARC cataloging schema does not account for all of the metadata that the WMS asks for.

When you have entered all of your metadata, make sure to save your work before exiting.  Your metadata will index upon saving.  Once we have ingested your video, it will be accessible through NJVid.

Thank you for contributing to the NJVid Commons!

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How to Produce your own Videos

We will continue to update and modify these guidelines.

  1. Information Today, Inc. has published a useful article (http://www.infotoday.com/mls/sep08/Carson.shtml) advising libraries on how take photographs at library events in light of contemporary publicity and privacy laws.  Many of the concepts discussed in the article can be applied to the creation of videos.
  2. When creating born-digital videos to contribute to NJVid, we recommend that you adhere as closely as possible to the NJVid Codec & Settings Spec Sheet.  It lists the technical specifications by which NJVid encodes analog audiovisual materials.  Adhering to this baseline will enable NJVid to consistently maintain sufficient audio and picture quality from one video to the next.  It will also enable us to preserve your video, since all digital files created for presentation purposes will derive from a high quality archival master.
  3. A word of advice on how to obtain licenses to videos presently created or in the future.  You may use our Sample Release Form for Participants to obtain permission to record, digitize and preserve the work of participants, performers and other contributors of intellectual property to a video you will be creating or recording.  For example, you can give this form to the parents of minors attending a school event or to adults participating in a community gathering.  By obtaining signed releases at the time of video creation, you relieve yourself of having to obtain licenses later on.
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Additional References

The videos listed below provide supplementary information regarding the topics addressed above, including copyright, conservation and preservation of videos, and production.