The Performing Arts Data Service: Imaginations/Universities Network Pilot Project.

The Performing Arts Data Service (PADS), funded by the Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC) and based at the University of Glasgow, aims to support research and
teaching in UK Higher Education by collecting and promoting the use of digital data
relating to the performing arts: music, film, broadcast arts, theatre and dance. The
PADS is one of 5 service providers of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS)
which will provide a single gateway for arts and humanities scholars wishing to search
for datasets across various discipline areas. Data is indexed with Dublin Core
metadata, will interoperate with other databases within the AHDS and beyond, and will
be available via the Web.

Data relating to Performing Arts is by nature diverse: from text based, to visuals/images,
to the intrinsically time-based. Any information system for dealing with this range of
material must be able to store complex and composite data, cope with a multitude of
single documents, and offer intelligent, user-friendly but controlled access over wide
area networks. To be of most use to researchers some means of delivery of data is
required as well as effective searching. To this end PADS has acquired two Silicon
Graphics Origin 200 servers, one of which will act as a media server streaming audio
and video over scalable networks; the other will run an object-orientated database
(Hyperwave Information Server) which will store both the non-time-based data and the
metadata of the material on the media server. A significant issue facing the PADS is that
of streaming audio and video to multiple platforms over varying bandwidths.

This paper will cover the general information systems requirements for complex
multimedia data and the web; will describe in detail the hybrid database and mediaserver
system chosen for use at the PADS; and give an overview of current plans for
testing video streaming at the PADS in conjunction with the British Film Institute/British
Universities Film and Video Council and Joint Information Systems Committee’s
“Imagination/Universities Network Pilot”.