As the means for production and distribution of digital audio proliferate, appropriate metadata tools are needed to facilitate, control and extend these activities. There has been a great deal of activity in individual organisations to develop metadata tools. However, substantial issues remain to be addressed before the desired goal of global exchange and common understanding can be reached. International standardisation, such as the work of MPEG7 and MPEG21 may hold some important answers.

This conference seeks to describe the state of the art, identify the issues, and indicate directions for the development of advanced metadata systems, both for consumer distribution and business-to-business. It will bring together media publishers and software designers, media librarians and archivists, database managers and streaming engineers, whose operations are increasingly dependent on the success of sophisticated metadata systems.

For an outline plan of the programme, please click here.

For a list of the papers by session and the related abstracts, please click here.

A PDF file of the full conference preview can be downloaded here.

On the 135-meter-high London Eye you can see as far as 25 miles away, and you have a bird�s eye view of such major London sights as St. Paul�s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben. Chair John Grant and his committee are planning a conference this June 17-19 that will give you a great view of the critically important subject of metadata. Metadata for Audio will be held at Church House, the conference center that is just a stone�s throw from Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament in central London.

As the means for production and distribution of digital audio proliferate, appropriate metadata tools are needed to facilitate, control, and extend these activities. There has been a great deal of activity in individual organizations to develop metadata tools. However, substantial issues remain to be addressed before the desired goal of global exchange and common understanding can be reached. International standardization, such as the work on MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 may hold some important answers.

This conference seeks to describe the state of the art, identify the issues, and indicate directions for the development of advanced metadata systems, both for consumer distribution and business-to-business. It will bring together media publishers and software designers, media librarians and archivists, database managers and streaming engineers whose operations are increasingly dependent on the success of sophisticated metadata systems.

Tutorial Day

Gerhard Stoll and Russell Mason, papers cochairs, have targeted a number of papers for tutorial presentations on Thursday, June 17 as a good way to offer attendees a thorough introduction to the subject of metadata. Two invited papers in the first morning session, "Metadata, Identities, and Handling Strategies," by Chris Chambers, and "Before There Was Metadata," by Mark Yonge, are introductory papers to set the stage for everything that follows.

The next session, File Basics, has three invited papers: "Introduction to MXF and AAF," by Philip DeNier; "XML Primer," by Claude Seyrat; and "Keeping it Simple: BWF and AES31," by John Emmett.

The first session on Thursday afternoon, Practical Schemes, starts with an invited paper by Phillipa Morell, "The Role of Registries." The next paper, by researchers from Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, will look at a system for managing sound effects. And Richard Wright will present an invited paper on the Dublin Core. The final session on Thursday is a workshop on MPEG-7. This tutorial day is also available as a single-day registration option (see the registration form).

Conference Day 1

On Friday the papers sessions begin with Frameworks, which includes an invited paper by Wes Curtis, "P-META: Program Data Exchange in Practice." This will be followed by the first posters session. And the final morning session will be Toolkits, which will include two invited papers: "Digital Media Project," by R. Nicol, and "MPEG-21: What and Why," by Jan Bormans and Kate Grant. After lunch there will be the two-part session Feature Extraction. The second part of the posters session will also be on Friday afternoon.

On Friday evening there will be an optional (not included in conference registration fee) banquet and guided tour at the historic Houses of Parliament. The evening will start with a tour of the debating chambers of the Houses of Commons and Lords. There will be a brief technical talk about the sound-reinforcement system in the Lords Chamber, which uses 84 microphones on motorized winches and has over 400 individually controlled loudspeakers. Afterwards dinner will be served in a room overlooking the Thames River.

Conference Day 2

The entire Saturday morning session will be Broadcast Implementations, which will include papers on the metadata processes of British, German, and Japanese broadcasters.

Metadata is the "bread and butter" of libraries and archives, so the first afternoon session on Saturday will include papers about projects at the U.S. Library of Congress, Spanish National Radio, and Swedish Radio. The final conference session will be on metadata needed for the online delivery of audio. The calendar, complete program with abstracts, and conference registration form follow on pages can be found here and here.

And, of course, you should try to schedule an extra day or two to visit one of the world�s great cities. London preserves its magnificent history and at the same time encourages new music, art, literature, and architecture; just what good metadata does for audio. Meet your colleagues there June 17-19 for the AES 25th International Conference, Metadata for Audio, it�s going to be absolutely fabulous. Go here to register online.