EASAIER

Resources

Funded by the European Union, Information Science Technologies

Enabling Access to Sound Archives through Integration, Enrichment and Retrieval

Download EASAIER Executive Summary 2007 (pdf)

Many digital sound archives still suffer from tremendous problems concerning access. Materials are often in different formats, with related media in separate collections, and with non-standard, specialist, incomplete or even erroneous metadata. Thus, the end user is unable to discover the full value of the archived material. To expose the inherent value of the archived material, powerful multimedia mining techniques are needed, in combination with content extractors, meaningful descriptors, and visualization tools.

There is also a need to improve retrieval effectiveness. Existing retrieval systems often do not take into account the specific nature of the media content. Search by speech or musical feature functionality is rare. Thus retrieval techniques are restricted and inflexible. To address this, multiple retrieval techniques need to be merged and deployed, and similarity and structure must be conceptualised in order to provide a usable service. An efficient and effective retrieval system needs to be grounded in semantic description, similarity, and structure in order to provide rich functionalities related to the exploration of sound archives.

Another issue is that of providing appropriate interaction with and presentation of material for the end-users. An archive used by musicians and music students, for instance, requires that the material can be manipulated or modified appropriately at playback; archives of recorded broadcasts need to emphasise appropriate segmentation and interactive speech recognition features. In addition, the creation of tailored collections with customized material has been identified as a strong user need in access systems.

These scenarios necessitate the development of enhanced and appropriate retrieval systems, as well as organizational structures and the means to interact with the presentation of materials. This demands appropriate metadata that can be automatically created in order to deliver, share or organize the archives.

This is the motivation for the two and a half year European project, Enabling Access to Sound Archives through Integration, Enrichment and Retrieval (EASAIER). EASAIER allows archived materials to be accessed in different ways and at different levels. The system will be designed with libraries, museums, broadcast archives, and music schools and archives in mind. However, the tools may be used by anyone interested in accessing archived material; amateur or professional, regardless of the material involved. Furthermore, it enriches the access experience as well, since it enables the user to experiment with the materials in exciting new ways.

EASAIER implements recent advances in machine learning, music and speech processing, and information retrieval. Furthermore, it addresses a growing demand for interactive electronic materials. Outcomes will be valuable to both sound archive content providers and end-users. By enriching and organizing the materials in the archive, we will create new and innovative methods of access. This enhanced access stimulates use, because multimedia resources will be connected, and archived material will be exploited and made visible to the right users. This will be deployed in connection with strong evaluation studies using communities of users and content managers.

EASAIER will provide a unique, friendly interactive experience, utilizing state-of-the-art technologies to increase the effectiveness of sound archive access. Most importantly, all of this will be done in a reactive manner, in direct response to user needs. These inter-connectable components will be devised, developed, and tested in connection with user communities and content distributors. Previous work within the digital library community has identified strong demand for specific tools. Rather than ‘guessing’ at demands for new technology, these demands have been specified and this project is focused on addressing these needs. This minimises risk and greatly increases the impact of this work.

The EASAIER Consortium consists of 3 companies and 4 academic institutions. The partners have considerable experience in national and international projects, and strengths in both speech and music, processing and retrieval, and the relevant skills in evaluation, deployment and integration. Together, they will enable access to sound archives through enrichment of materials, integration of multimedia sources, and creation of advanced retrieval systems.

For further information contact Dr. Josh Reiss at coordinator@easaier.org