Video is the new grey

Conference reports and conference proceedings are a crucial source of information as they document the current state of research in a scientific community. Moreover, these documents are mostly grey literature. However, in addition to printed conference proceedings, it is becoming more and more common practice to record and subsequently publish conference talks. As such, these videos are also an important element of contemporary scientific outputs and thus part of the cultural heritage. However, no sustainable standard has yet been established for handling these documents. Essentially, all of these videos are either published on commercial platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, on the conference webpage or not at all. Therefore, they are truly grey material.

While libraries have well-established procedures for collecting textual conference reports as part of the grey literature, comparable procedures for audio-visual conference recordings have not yet been established. On the other hand, according to the Meeting & EventBarometer 2016, more than half of the hosts and organizers express a need for action in setting up virtual platforms that complement the real life event.

Against this backdrop, we conducted an analysis of the needs and demands of conference hosts, organizers and service providers regarding audiovisual recordings. Qualitative interviews were conducted among 30 respondents to find out how widespread conference recordings are in engineering and the natural sciences. Furthermore, we wanted to obtain information on the use of these materials and about potential needs for support.

In this poster we present the results of the interviews. Almost half (47%) of the respondents stated that they already produced conference recordings (40%) or are planning to do so in the future (7%). The most common publishing platforms are the conference website (92%) and YouTube (46%). The most important aspects during video production and publication are rapid, cost-efficient and simple procedures, while after publication visibility and sustainability of the material are the most important concerns. The results of this study will be used to improve the workflows and services offered in the TIB AV-Portal, a web-based platform for quality-tested scientific videos such as conference recordings.