Multimedium / multimedia
"Multimedia is the integration of existing technologies of audio, video, animation and telecoms with computing" (Multimedia Report, 1955, p. 38).
"Multimedia is the use of several different media to convey information (text, audio, graphics, animation, video, and interactivity). Multimedia also refers to computer data storage devices, especially those used to store multimedia content." (Wikipedia, 2005).
The term multimedium is typically used about electronic media, for example, CD-ROM, which integrate, for example, sound, pictures and text, which the users may retrieve by different kinds of interaction.
The term multimedium is a little tricky. If media are, for example, paper media and film media, then by implication multimedia should mean, for example, a combination of paper and film, which is not the usual understanding. Buckland (1998) wrote: ""Multimedia," which used to denote multiple, physically-different media, is now of renewed interest, because, ironically, the multiple media can be reduced to the mono-medium of electronically stored bits."
In another sense of the word should paper,
for example, be regarded as a multimedium: It can be used for text and pictures
(visual sense), Braille (tactile sense) and, in old piano tapes, as a medium for
audio sense.
Literature:
Buckland. M. K. (1998). What is a "digital document"? Document Numérique (Paris) 2(2), 221-230. http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~buckland/digdoc.html
Hansen, B. (2005). Dictionary of Multimedia: Terms & Acronyms. 4th ed. Wilsonville, OR: Franklin Beedle & Associates.
Hoffos, S. (1995). Basic Concepts: Multimedie. The Multimedia Yearbook 1995. London: Interactive Media Publications.
Multimedia Report. København: IDC Scandinavia, 1995.
Stone, S. & Buckland, M. (Eds). (1992). Studies in Multimedia. Based on the Proceedings of the 1991 ASIS Mid-Year Meeting. Silver Spring, MD: ASIS, 1992. (ASIS Monograph Series).
Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. (2005). Multimedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia
See also: Hypertext/Hypermedium;
Medium.'
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 02-05-2006