Exclusives

Disney’s Meg Morrissey Named Co-Chair of LMT Working Group

Meg Morrissey, senior data librarian at Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution, has been appointed co-chair of the Language Metadata Table (LMT) Working Group.

The news comes ahead of the group’s first LMT meeting of the year, scheduled to take place Feb. 1. Morrissey joined Disney in April 2018 as metadata governance librarian and was promoted to senior data librarian in February 2020.

Prior to joining Disney, she was with content management and entertainment services provider Allied Vaughn for more than two years, joining the firm in 2015 as digital project manager and then becoming DAM curator and later content management specialist.

“I’ve been a member of the LMT Working Group since 2018, and I’ve gotten so much out of it,” Morrissey pointed out. “Working with experts to clearly and accurately capture the nuances of language is a joy.”

She added: “As co-chair, my ultimate goal is to expand the reach and breadth of the LMT. The way content creators are reaching audiences is changing, and localization trends reflect that. As the LMT user base expands, our language base must scale to meet their needs. I will prioritize supporting the experts in the working group as we continue to provide clear and accurate language codes for anyone who wants them.”

Yonah Levenson, manager of Metadata Standards and Taxonomy Strategy at WarnerMedia, has served as chair of the LMT Working Group and will continue on as co-chair.

“I, along with former co-chair Laura Dawson, conceived the LMT for HBO in 2016,” according to Levenson. “We had no idea that there was a need for language code standardization for M&E; we just wanted to provide internal metadata consistency,” she said.

The LMT is a standard that provides a timely solution for language codes for the media and entertainment industry.  Launched with 125 codes in July 2018 at a MESA event in NYC, the LMT now contains over 230 codes, and there are more in the process of being added.

The LMT is now co-sponsored by MESA as well as SMPTE.  It has now been submitted to become a formal SMPTE standard, and is making its way through the approval and adoption process.

“The interest in LMT continues to grow, and I am contacted regularly by other organizations who are interested in adopting LMT,” Levenson continued. “It’s reached the point where it is time to add a co-chair. Meg Morrissey of Disney, who has been participating in the LMT WG since its formation, will be a fantastic co-chair.  Her overall knowledge of metadata, and language codes make her an excellent choice. The WG and the standard will have a better balance by having two co-chairs from different organizations,” Levenson said.

Planning and leading the LMT WG meetings, along with updating the LMT with additional languages and frequent presentations at conferences to continue to share knowledge of the LMT are all part of the responsibilities of the LMT co-chairs.

“Adding Meg as the co-chair means that the LMT will have another official point of contact, as well as a fresh pair of eyes to check for final code additions.  I’m really excited about having Meg formally join the LMT WG,” Levenson stated.