Challenges facing researchers using multimedia data: tools for layering significance

Two distinct communities of visual media users have begun to influence each other over the last few decades-those who use media as forms of art and entertainment, and those, from a variety of knowledge domains, who use media forms as tools to explain, illustrate or communicate. From the entertainment and cinematic world, a rich grammar has evolved which describes a range of identifiable genres and basic structures-what Davenport and her research team at MIT refer to as primitives (1991). However, in the world of academia, we have just begun to think deeply about non-print media as being other than vehicles for representing our knowledge via slides, tapes, overheads, images in books and various other visualization or acoustic aids. This article will show why these two communities have much to learn from each other in the light of emerging multimedia networks. First, I will describe the challenges facing researchers who use multimedia data, and then I will explain several features of an existing multimedia research tool which address these challenges.