The Open Video Digital Library Project (2000–2025.)

Project Overview

The Open Video Digital Library Project has been decommissioned effective July 2025. The project served research and education communities for 25 years (2000-2025). The open access/open source video repository was one of the early video digital libraries on the Internet and served as a research platform for video retrieval and digital library user interface research and became a valued source for curated, freely accessible videos for the K-16 education around the world. 3931 Full-length videos were collected from sources as varied as NASA, the Library of Congress, the Prelinger Archive, and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conferences. Funded primarily by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Library of Congress, the project led to research innovations on video data management, faceted search services, and user interface features such as keyframe slide summaries and fast forwards. More than two dozen papers by faculty, students, and post-doctoral fellows at UNC-Chapel Hill and other universities were published in information and computer science journals and conferences (a list appears below).

Journal Articles

• Wildemuth, B., Marchionini, G., Fu, G., Oh, J.S., & Yang, M. (2018). The usefulness of multimedia surrogates for making relevance judgments about digital video objects. Information Processing & Management, 56(6). DOI
• Marchionini, G., Song, Y., & Farrell, R. (2009). Multimedia surrogates for video gisting: Toward combining spoken words and imagery. Information Processing & Management, 45(6), 615-630.
• Marchionini, G. (2008). Digital video policy and practice in higher education: From gatekeeping to viral lectures. Educational Technology, 48(5), 39-41.
• Marchionini, G., Wildemuth, B., & Geisler, G. (2006). The Open Video Digital Library: A Mobius strip of theory and practice. JASIST, 57(2), 1629-43.
• Marchionini, G. (2004). A briefing on the evolution and status of the open video digital library. International Journal on Digital Libraries, 4(1), 36-38.
• Marchionini, G. & Geisler, G. (2002). The Open Video Digital Library. dLib Magazine, 8(12). Link
• Marchionini, G. (2003). Video and Learning Redux: New Capabilities for Practical Use. Educational Technology, 43(2), 36-41.
• Slaughter, L., Marchionini, G. & Geisler, G. (2000). Open Video: A Framework for a Test Collection. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 23(3), 219-245.

Research Conferences

• Song, Y., Marchionini, G., & Oh, C. (2010). What are the most eye-catching and ear-catching features in the video? Proceedings of the 2010 WWW Conference, Raleigh, NC, April 26-30, 2010.
• Marcos, M. C., Marchionini, G., & Russell, T. (2008). “Personas” y escenarios en el rediseño de la mediateca Open Video Digital. Proc. IX Congreso Internacional Interacción Persona-Ordenador 2008, pp. 127-130.
• Song, Y. & Marchionini, G. (2007). Effects of Audio and Visual Surrogates for Making Sense of Digital Video. CHI 2007, San Jose, CA, April 28-May 3, 2007, NY: ACM Press, pp. 867-876.
• Marchionini, G. (2006). Human Performance Measures for Video Retrieval. Multimedia Information Retrieval Workshop (ACM Multimedia 2006), Santa Barbara, CA, October 23-27, 2006, NY: ACM Press, pp. 307-311.
• Tibbo, H. R., Lee, C. A., Marchionini, G., & Howard, D. (2006). VidArch: preserving meaning of digital video over time. Archiving 2006, Ottawa, Canada, May 23-26, 2006, pp. 210-215.
• Yang, M. & Marchionini, G. (2005). Deciphering visual gist and its implications. CHI 2005, Portland, OR, April 2-7, 2005, pp. 1877-1880.
• Yang, M., Wildemuth, B., & Marchionini, G. (2004). Concept-based vs. content-based video retrieval. 12th ACM International Conference on Multimedia, pp. 368-371.
• Yang, M. & Marchionini, G. (2005). Exploring users’ video relevance criteria. ASIS&T Annual Meeting, Providence, RI, Nov 12-17, pp. 229-238.
• Yang, M., Wildemuth, B. & Marchionini, G. (2004). Concept-based vs. content-based video retrieval. ACM Multimedia Conference, New York, Oct 10-16.
• Yang, M., et al. (2003). Measuring user performance with digital video collections. ASIS&T Annual Conference, Long Beach, CA, Oct. 19-22, 2003, pp. 3-11.
• Mu, X. & Marchionini, G. (2003). Enriched video semantic metadata. ASIS&T Annual Conference, Long Beach, CA, Oct. 19-22, 2003, pp. 316-322.
• Hughes, A., et al. (2003). Text or Pictures? An Eyetracking Study. CIVR 2003, Urbana-Champaign, IL, July 24-24, 2003, LNCS #2728, pp. 271-280.
• Wilkens, T., et al. (2003). The role of narrative in understanding digital video. ASIS&T Annual Conference, Long Beach, CA, Oct. 19-22, 2003, pp. 323-329.
• Wildemuth, B., et al. (2003). Evaluating fast forward surrogates. ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Houston, TX, May 27-31, 2003, pp. 221-230.
• Meng, Y., Mu., X., & Marchionini, G. (2003). VIVO: A video indexing and visualization organizer. ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Houston, TX, May 27-31, 2003, p. 403.
• Hughes, A., et al. (2003). Text or Pictures? An Eyetracking Study. CIVR 2003, University of Illinois, July 24-25, 2003, LNCS 2728, pp. 271-280.
• Wildemuth, B., et al. (2002). Alternative Surrogates for Video Objects. ECDL 2002, Rome, September 16-18, 2002, pp. 493-507.
• Geisler, G., et al. (2002). Video browsing interfaces. CHI 02 Extended Abstracts, Minneapolis, MN, April 20-25, 2002, pp. 514-515.
• Karthikeyan, M., et al. (2002). Searching video segments. ICADL 2002, Singapore, Dec 11-14, 2002, pp. 528-528.
• Geisler, G., et al. (2001). Interface concepts for the Open Video Project. ASIS Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, Nov. 5-8, 2001, pp. 58-75.
• Nelson, M., et al. (2001). A Bucket Architecture for the Open Video Project. JCDL 2001, Roanoke, VA, June 24-28, 2001, pp. 310-311.
• Geisler, G. & Marchionini, G. (2000). The Open Video Project. ACM Digital Library Conference, San Antonio, June 4-6, 2000, pp. 258-259.

Toolkit

GitHub tool kit by Gary Geisler

The Open Video Digital Library Project (2000–2025)