Sound & Vision Labs (labs.beeldengeluid.nl) showcases applications, datasets and APIs developed or co-produced by the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision’s Research & Development department. Sound & Vision Labs is a place where researchers can test tools and prototypes and developers can be inspired by available AV collections and open source software.
Applications, datasets and APIs
The three main resources available on Sound & Vision Labs are applications that we developed or worked on, datasets that can be used by researchers and developers and APIs, interfaces that offer other applications access to some of these applications and datasets. They are categorised according to the media they contain and the main research topics we work on: the themes: Access, Use and Context; Users; Metadata; Digitisation and Preservation; Humanities.
The Dive application
Under applications, users can find demonstrators like DIVE, which is a linked-data digital cultural heritage collection browser. DIVE provides innovative access to heritage objects from Sound & Vision and the National Library of the Netherlands, by using historical events and narratives as the context for searching, browsing and presenting of individual and group of objects. DIVE focuses onto supporting digital humanities scholars in their online explorations and research questions
The demonstrator uses semantics from existing collection and linked data vocabularies to establish connections between media objects and the events, people, locations and concepts that are depicted in or associated with those objects. The innovative interface combines web technology and a theory of interpretation to browse a network of data in an intuitive, ”infinite” fashion.
The DIVE demonstrator
AVResearcherXL and TROVe
In addition to these public access demonstrators, the site includes tools and services like AVResearcherXL and TROVe, which were developed specifically for higher education and academic research. TROVe, or Transmedia Observatory, is a search engine for digital humanities that allows researchers to explore and partly analyse public debates and discourses through the diffusion of news and opinion through different media and time. In some cases the applications require authentication for access. You can request access via the contact details on the application pages.
Open Collections
For those interested in using Sound & Vision datasets or other available resources, there is a dedicated area with openly licensed audiovisual collections, including newsreels from the 20th century from the Netherlands (Open Images) and a sound collection that gives insight into the changing soundscapes of the Netherlands (Sound of the Netherlands).
APIs and other links
If you have the technical skill, you’re warmly invited to play with one of our APIs or use Sound & Vision's open source software. Finally, the site provides links to related sources, such as the thesaurus for audiovisual archives (GTAA), a list of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), as well and other lab environments in the cultural heritage domain such as BBC, VRT or Europeana Labs.
Presenting all these resources in one central place makes it easier for researchers and the general public to find and use them and get in touch with the people who developed them.
Contact
In case you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, please get in touch with us by sending an email to labs-feedback@beeldengeluid.nl or contact us via Twitter @benglabs.
Useful links
- Read here how Sound & Vision Labs was developed
- Europeana Labs