[pdb-discuss] Some things to think about at tonight's meeting

Mon Jan 15 17:37:54 UTC 2007

Hi Rufus et al,

I'm really sorry, but due to my extreme disorganisation, I've just  
remembered that I've got to be somewhere in about half an hour, and  
will therefore be unable to make the IRC meeting. Am still very keen  
to be involved - could someone post a transcript of the meeting back  
to the pdb-discuss list, and I'll read over it at a later date?

Apologies, and many thanks,

Tim

On 15 Jan 2007, at 17:28, Rufus Pollock wrote:

> Here are some suggestions for things to think about in relation to  
> tonight's meeting.
>
> 1. What we plan to build. In particular do we want to build our own  
> db of work metadata or contribute to an existing one? Originally I   
> had thought we would need to construct our own as nothing  
> appropriate (structured + open licensed) already existed. However I  
> spent quite a bit of this afternoon looking again at musicbrainz:
>
>   http://musicbrainz.org/
>
> When I last looked at this in detail (as it must have been a year  
> ago) they appeared to be using CC by-nc-sa which rendered their  
> data non-open. However since then they seem to have changed to  
> making all the core data public domain and only keeping the CC by- 
> nc-sa for a restricted set of add-on data. Thus, is seems to me, it  
> would make a lot of sense for us to avoid reinventing the wheel by  
> creating our own metadata database and instead focus on:
>
>   1. Contributing data on *old* works to musicbrainz (old data is  
> what we are interested from a public domain point of view)
>   2. Developing software and algorithms to determine which works/ 
> performances are in the public domain
>
> There are some drawbacks to using musicbrainz of course. For  
> example, (AFAICT) they don't always draw a clean distinction  
> between 'authors' and 'performers' (they do have a composer  
> category in their Advanced Relationships section though). However  
> stuff like this seems very minor compared to the benefits.
>
> ~~ If we go down this route then things we can work on: ~~
>
> 2. Contributing data. This breaks down into several parts:
>
>   1. Entering data by hand (e.g. by looking up dates in wikipedia)
>   2. Getting hold of full datasets either 'by hand' (i.e. finding  
> them) or robotically (e.g. from library of congress)
>   3. Extracting the data we want from the datasets we acquire (for  
> example from the composer list we were given or from the BBC data)
>   4. Once we have structured data uploading up to whatever storage  
> system we are using (musicbrainz or our own)
>
> 3. Developing a front-end to show current list of public domain  
> works, questionable works (i.e. status unclear etc etc).
>
> 4. Developing a project website (based at http:// 
> www.publicdomainworks.net/ or whatever other url we choose). I  
> suggest we use wordpress for this and move the current demo wiki- 
> based site to alpha.publicdomainworks.net.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rufus
>
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