A century of iconic news footage now available free
Today marks the official launch of NewsFilm Online, in which over 3,000 hours of historic news footage from ITN’s archive division will be made available to further and higher education institutes in the UK, providing them with free access to a century of video material.
‘NewsFilm Online is a ground-breaking example of a creative partnership between higher education and a leading commercial news archive.'
‘NewsFilm Online is a ground-breaking example of a creative partnership between higher education and a leading commercial news archive. It is set to move the agenda forwards in the appreciation of the long-term educational and scholarly value of broadcast news,’ according to journalism professor Stewart Purvis of City University.
Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow makes almost 400 appearances on NewsFilm Online. He believes that ‘NewsFilm Online is an exciting and fascinating initiative: a resource which will provide educators and students with a myriad of windows into British and world history over the past century.’
The NewsFilm Online service features ITN and Reuters content. It forms part of a £22 million digitisation programme funded by Jisc to promote the innovative use of ICT in education and research. The archive will be available to all disciplines across further and higher education for research, teaching and learning.
One of the unique elements of the archive licence agreement is that users from subscribing educational institutions can download clips and edit them to create their own user content for projects - a first for this type of material.
The archive starts with black and white film footage of the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910 and ends with a colour news clip of Jade Goody in a racial bullying scandal in Big Brother 2007. Other significant events include the Suez crisis in 1956, Nelson Mandela’s first interview in 1961, the moon landing in 1969 and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Users can view and download whole newsreels for use in virtual learning environments.
Users can download and edit clips to create their own content for projects.
The NewsFilm Online archive is a collaboration between ITN Source, the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC), Jisc and EDINA, a Jisc national data centre. The process of digitising newsreels from the 20th and 21st centuries has been undertaken by the BUFVC, which selected the NewsFilm Online material from over 1.5 million hours of archive content.
Jisc Chair, Professor Sir Ron Cooke, said: ‘The Jisc digitisation programme demonstrates e-resourcing at its best. It is unlocking a wealth of material - some of it previously hard to access – and making it available to users regardless of time and location. The NewsFilm Online project is just one of many that will enable the UK higher and further education community to dip into the history, culture and landscape of the UK and beyond.’
Mark Wood, Chief Executive of ITN, added: ‘We’re delighted to give students and educators access to this great video content, which brings the events of the past century to life. The NewsFilm initiative is yet another example of the rapidly expanding use of video content at all levels of education.’
Find out more about the NewsFilm Online archive.