This paper described a project initiated by the author in collaboration with Real World Studios, that is exploring ways of applying software reuse concepts, methods and tools to the domain of synthesized and sampled sound artifacts. The paper provides background on the project, motivates the applicability of software reuse concepts and tools in multimedia domains, describes overall project aims from a reuse perspective, and summarizes current project status. Digital sound resources exemplify a growing class of multimedia artifacts (such as fonts, clip art, and video images) that challenge our conventional notions of software systems or modules, yet exhibit a number of ``software-like'' attributes. As collections of these artifacts grow larger, more complex, heterogenous and semantically rich we encounter problems of component classification, retrieval, configuration and generation strikingly similar to those addressed by software reuse research. Reuse techniques may therefore contribute unique approaches within the area of audio and other multimedia database technology. In addition, we expect to extend and generalize reuse methods and tools by applying them beyond traditional software domains; for example, widening our repertoire of domain modelling techniques and representations. Even initial inventory and modelling tasks have yielded important general lessons for domain analysis methods. The project will also explore the possible role of multimedia technology itself as a component of general-purpose library interfaces.
Keywords: Domain Analysis, Reusability, Multimedia, Domain Modelling