The BBC has announced a new umbrella initiative called the Digital Media Initiative that seems to be focused on the BBC’s internal media development processes. Given that since I turned in the final draft of “Everything Is Miscellaneous” the BBC backslid from its commitment to radically open up its media resources – a trend I acknowledged briefly in the book itself – could this be the BBC embracing openness again?

It’s hard to tell because the information is so high level. But it’s encouraging to see a couple of mentions of getting the metadata right, including “at the point of knowledge” (a weird phrase I assume means basically that the creators provide the metadata) but also “gradually enhanced to facilitate effective exploitation of content throughout the asset’s life.” No mention of it being enhanced by the listeners/viewers/re-users even within the BBC, but maybe that’s part of it. And, maybe the commitment to “support open standards” will result in support externally, rather than relying on Microsoft software. [Tags: bbc metadata media]