MEDIA WEAVER - A DISTRIBUTED MEDIA AUTHORING SYSTEM FOR NETWORKED SCHOLARLY WORKSPACES

We describe MediaWeaver-a software framework for composing distributed media in the context of university research and instruction. Authors compose networked media, software tools and mediastreams, and can free ly annotate media by media of any form using schema of their own desig n. Faculty and student authors compose distributed media using common Macintosh, World Wide Web and NeXTSTEP applications, supported by serv ices from UNIX workstations. The MediaWeaver system mediates between n etwork multimedia services and interface kits with which novice progra mmers and non-programmers may easily create radically different intera ctive views into shared mediabases. The network services include searc h engine abstractions, filters, relational modeling frameworks. MediaW eaver has supported collaborative projects in history, drama, music, a rt, anthropology, environmental studies, and other fields since 1993. Applications range from traditional relational text databases and inde xed HTML WWW sites to course readers, research archives, journals and seminar spaces.