Déjà Vu: The On-Line Stock Video Archive

Client: Andersen Telemedia (via The Institute for the Learning Sciences)
Project: Video indexing and retrieval software
My role: Content designer/developer; user's manual writer
Tools used: Custom software developed by ILS

Project Description

With funding from Andersen Telemedia, ILS graduate student Andrew Gordon and Computer Science Professor Eric Domeshek began the Déjà Vu project in 1995 to explore new methods of storage and retrieval for archives of stock video clips. Their intention was to provide an alternative to the way that most on-line libraries and databases are used today. They felt that many of these libraries and databases relied too heavily on the query-based search methods that have been with us since the introduction of computer databases. Users' primary interaction with most library and database systems is through textual queries, which too often put users in the position of trying to guess keywords that may have been used to index materials. Gordon and Domeshek's philosophy is that it is better to offer choices than to play guessing games. Following this approach, the Déjà Vu project team designed a system that allows users to retrieve and store materials in different media archives using a simple point-and-click interface.

The Déjà Vu project team feels that their main contribution is their research on organizing the space of index terms. For this type of browsing system to be effective, it is essential to provide the set of links between index terms that best meets users' search needs. The first version of Déjà Vu used terms such as People, Places, Things and Activities. A second version utilizes link-types provided by standard library controlled vocabularies, supplemented by ILS's own terms.

Sample Screens

Credits