Seminars – which include PI’s scientific seminar series (including colloquia), summer schools, courses, workshops, conferences, public lectures, and special events – are recorded using a combination of A/V equipment and Mediasite, which captures both a video feed of the speaker and a VGA feed of any supporting materials – such as presentation slides, transparencies, or black board notes and figures. These on-demand seminars with video and timed presentation materials can be accessed via PIRSA in Windows and Flash formats (Flash is the ideal format for Linux and Mac users) as well as offering MP3 audio files and PDF’s of the supporting materials. New to PIRSA 2.0 is the introduction of a downloadable Windows media file that enables people to view the materials on personal devices at a later time. A similar ability to download Flash presentations is set for the next release. As a result, viewers come face to face with a split-screen image that enables them to watch the seminar from the perspective of an audience member, with the added advantages of being able to zoom-in, pause, and examine specific slides, equations, or figures more closely. While watching the seminar, viewers can review the support material slides and choose to advance the video to that point in the seminar, continue browsing content, or return to the current point in the seminar. This enables viewers to benefit from particular points of the seminar without having to watch the entire recording. | 
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The Evolution of PIRSAPIRSA was initially developed to address the specific needs of the scientific community in archiving and making multimedia as accessible and usable as possible. Lucien Hardy, PI Faculty member and driving force behind the design of PIRSA explains, “Seminars have always played an important role in propagating knowledge. However, it has been the written rather than the spoken word by which scientific knowledge has been recorded, archived, and passed down. These words were written on paper and archived in libraries.” In 1991 Paul Ginsparg, then at Los Alamos, set up an electronic archive (arXiv.org) for physics articles. By moving beyond paper, scientific ideas could be communicated almost instantly to the rest of the world. This revolution happened just about as soon as technology allowed it. Lucien Hardy adds, “Now technology has progressed further to the point that we can archive seminars. We have modeled PIRSA on arXiv.org. It is not so much a YouTube for science as it is a video arXiv for seminars. It is designed to be a useful resource for researchers rather than an entertainment channel. A permanent archive of seminars allows researchers to watch presentations they were unable to attend, to revisit them many years after they were recorded, and to cite them in their own work just as they would cite a regular article.” Since 2002 Perimeter Institute has recorded over 1700 seminars and continues to record them at a rate of approximately 10 per week. PIRSA makes these talks permanently available to the scientific community. The challenge in developing such an archival system is to determine the best way to offer seminars on the web. Simply posting content on the web versus creating a web archive that is attractive and usable to the broader community requires several components. Steve Bradwell, Application Development Manager and developer of the PIRSA site, comments, “We believe PIRSA’s success as a global, web based physics archive lies in both the quality of content provided and the accuracy and consistency of the supporting information and media formats. It’s more than just feature rich services, people want consistency and cross platform support. PIRSA offers that.” Just as PI’s award winning research facility provides a physical gathering point for international scientists to meet and explore new ideas in modern physics, PIRSA offers a readily accessible digital focal point to the global physics community. Snapshot of FeaturesFinding Lectures
The ’catch up’ feature enables you to quickly access talks that have been added since your last visit – in all, or in predefined areas of interests. Enhanced Categorization
PIRSA lectures are now clearly divided into the following categories: Series: Lectures given within a scientific series. Collections: Divided into conferences (including workshops), schools, and courses. Outreach: Any lecture given as a part of outreach programs. Speaker Page
This new page lists all talks by a given speaker, with a user-friendly URL available for each speaker (for example, http://pirsa.org/speaker/first_last; note the “_” between first and last name). Speaker searching has also been improved. PIRSA Numbering
Each lecture continues to receive a unique, permanent PIRSA number (for example, PIRSA:07110062). This number consists of YYMMR###, where R is a reserved digit, and ### is an incrementing value from 0 to 999 for each month. All lectures are still accessible directly by entering a URL such as the following: http://pirsa.org/07110062. Series Numbers
Scientific series are now assigned a unique identifier. For example, the Quantum Foundations Series identifier is PIRSA:S002, where ‘S’ represents series, and ‘002’ represents Quantum Foundations. All series pages will be accessible directly by entering a URL such as http://pirsa.org/S002. Collection numbers
Each collection is now assigned a unique identifier. For example, a PIRSA collection number is PIRSA:C07017, where ‘C’ represents collection, ‘YY’ represents the year, and ‘###’ represents the number assigned to a particular collection. Each collection is accessible directly by entering a URL such as http://pirsa.org/C07017. Podcasts
Collections and series pages now offer podcasts. Using software like iTunes, you can subscribe to any of our audio podcasts which automatically downloads the latest lectures as soon as you start the software. |
