It would be easier to locate the movie you want to watch in +the Internet Archive, if the +metadata about each movie was more complete and accurate. In the +archiving community, a well known saying state that good metadata is a +love letter to the future. The metadata in the Internet Archive could +use a face lift for the future to love us back. Here is a proposal +for a small improvement that would make the metadata more useful +today. I've been unable to find any document describing the various +standard fields available when uploading videos to the archive, so +this proposal is based on my best quess and searching through several +of the existing movies.
+ +I have a few use cases in mind. First of all, I would like to be +able to count the number of distinct movies in the Internet Archive, +without duplicates. I would further like to identify the IMDB title +ID of the movies in the Internet Archive, to be able to look up a IMDB +title ID and know if I can fetch the video from there and share it +with my friends.
+ +Second, I would like the Butter data provider for The Internet +archive +(available +from github), to list as many of the good movies as possible. The +plugin currently do a search in the archive with the following +parameters:
+ ++collection:moviesandfilms +AND NOT collection:movie_trailers +AND -mediatype:collection +AND format:"Archive BitTorrent" +AND year ++ +
Most of the cool movies that fail to show up in Butter do so +because the 'year' field is missing. The 'year' field is populated by +the year part from the 'date' field, and should be when the movie was +released (date or year). Two such examples are +Ben Hur +from 1905 and +Caminandes +2: Gran Dillama from 2013, where the year metadata field is +missing.
+ +So, my proposal is simply, for every movie in The Internet Archive +where an IMDB title ID exist, please fill in these metadata fields +(note, they can be updated also long after the video was uploaded, but +as far as I can tell, only by the uploader): + +-
+
+
- mediatype +
- Should be 'movie' for movies. + +
- collection +
- Should contain 'moviesandfilms'. + +
- title +
- The title of the movie, without the publication year. + +
- date +
- The data or year the movie was released. This make the movie show +up in Butter, as well as make it possible to know the age of the +movie and is useful to figure out copyright status. + +
- director +
- The director of the movie. This make it easier to know if the +correct movie is found in movie databases. + +
- publisher +
- The production company making the movie. Also useful for +identifying the correct movie. + +
- links + +
- Add a link to the IMDB title page, for example like this: <a +href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028496/">Movie in +IMDB</a>. This make it easier to find duplicates and allow for +counting of number of unique movies in the Archive. Other external +references, like to TMDB, could be added like this too. + +
I did consider proposing a Custom field for the IMDB title ID (for +example 'imdb_title_url', 'imdb_code' or simply 'imdb', but suspect it +will be easier to simply place it in the links free text field.
+ +I created +a +list of IMDB title IDs for several thousand movies in the Internet +Archive, but I also got a list of several thousand movies without +such IMDB title ID (and quite a few duplicates). It would be great if +this data set could be integrated into the Internet Archive metadata +to be available for everyone in the future, but with the current +policy of leaving metadata editing to the uploaders, it will take a +while before this happen. If you have uploaded movies into the +Internet Archive, you can help. Please consider following my proposal +above for your movies, to ensure that movie is properly +counted. :)
+ +The list is mostly generated using wikidata, which based on +Wikipedia articles make it possible to link between IMDB and movies in +the Internet Archive. But there are lots of movies without a +Wikipedia article, and some movies where only a collection page exist +(like for the +Caminandes example above, where there are three movies but only +one Wikidata entry).
+