Intro Quickstart Download software & manualOne of the main goals of the ECHO project is to emphasize collaboration in the different fields of humanities across institutes and across countries. Being able to share data over the internet can be a key factor in succesfull collaboration. This requires an effective way of cataloguing available data. Afterall, data will only be used if they can efficently be searched and retrieved, whether locally or remote. The IMDI (ISLE Metadata Initiative) Browser was developed with the aim of managing and accessing data and metadata files.
With IMDI you are able to access corpora containing metadata, media, annotation and info files. These files can be accessed by navigating through a hierarchical tree structure or by searching the metadata files using keywords. Each corpus is organized hierarchically. Files are grouped together based on their content, the speakers involved and/or the languages spoken. These groups, which are displayed in the IMDI Browser, allow you to easily navigate through the hierarchy. Metadata and infofiles are generally accessible to everybody, although sensitive information may be suppressed. This policy enables researchers to search metadata and thereby gain an overview of the available material. In the case of the ECHO project, also all annotation and media data are available to the outside world.
The ECHO corpus can also be accessed using your web browser. The IMDI Browser, however, has a more flexible user interface, and allows for complex queries. Please refer to the QuickStart Manual on this web site or the IMDI Browser Manual for further information on using the IMDI Browser.
Of course it is also possible to describe your own data sets using the IMDI conventions. Like the IMDI Browser, the IMDI Editor is freely available.