Media Matrix: Creating Secondary Repositories

This paper argues for the necessity of digital libraries to increase access to their holdings and have greater impact on e-learning and education by facilitating the creation of secondary repositories. These repositories will provide discipline/community specific metadata and applications and will allow users to find, use, manipulate and analyze digital objects more easily. To this end, MATRIX has developed Media Matrix 1.0 an online, easy to use server-side suite of tools that allows users to locate specific media and streaming media files found in digital repositories and segment, annotate and organize this media online. This application provides users with an environment both to work with and personalize digital media, and also to share and discuss their findings with a community of users. Through creating a secondary repository of usage statistics and user-generated materials/metadata to supplement both traditional cataloging records and discipline-specific online indexes, tools like Media Matrix can help extend the usefulness of digital libraries without increasing costs to the libraries.