Safeguarding history
Hundreds of thousands of hours of archive TV and radio programmes are at risk of being destroyed according to the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC).
The organisation – part funded by HEFCE and JISC – is calling on universities and colleges to take urgent action to safeguard these valuable and potentially unique records.
According to the BUFVC, the programmes mainly stored on VHS cassettes take up close to 20 kilometres of shelving across all academia, causing not only logistical and space problems, but also increasing storage costs to keep them safe.
To help solve this problem BUFVC will be hosting a one-day event at the BFI Southbank in London on December 9th to address these issues and to explore other alternatives to avoid the loss of unique programmes in this distributed national collection.
Luís Carrasqueiro Deputy Chief Executive, BUFVC says: “These recordings have cost millions of pounds to collect, licence, catalogue and store and it is really important that we preserve them properly for the future.
“We have the technology to digitise these programmes, not only will that make them easier to store it will ensure that they can accessed more quickly and be shared more easily within educational establishments around the country.
“Our event will offer people from within the sector to share ideas about how we can convert these tapes into digital files, which programmes to prioritise and how we can make them available under licence on-line. We will also look at how disposal of VHS tapes should be conducted and how we can share catalogue information between colleges and universities up and down the country in order to identify which recordings are unique and most at risk,” added Luís.
The results of a national survey conducted by BUFVC for HEFCE of the off-air recording activity, their cataloguing and holdings at colleges and universities will also be announced at the event. This survey was conducted in order to explore routes to increase efficiency and promote better exchange of information between institutions that conduct off-air recording under the Educational Recording Agency licences in the UK.
Find out more about attending the event