Independent Radio News Archive Digitisation
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The Independent Radio News/London Broadcasting Company radio archive consists of 7,000 reel-to-reel tapes in a collection that runs from 1973 to the mid-1990s. It is the most important commercial radio archive in the UK and provides a unique audio history of the period.
Executive Summary
See the Independent Radio News Archive
At 2.00pm On Tuesday, March 3 2009, the brand name 'Independent Radio News' disappeared from commercial radio news bulletins across the UK after nearly 36 years, to be replaced by Sky Radio News. At that moment, an iconic name in independent news journalism was lost. The significance of the JISC-funded London Broadcast Company / Independent Radio News (LBC/IRN) Archive project undertaken by the Centre for Broadcasting History Research (CBHR) has thus assumed an even greater importance than was conceived at its outset. 'Independent Radio News' as a name has been consigned to the history of broadcasting, and in time it may be that resources such as this archive will be the only way in which academics and students of broadcasting and journalism will be able to understand its original identity. Here, ring-fenced for posterity, is an era in radio journalism.
The aim of Bournemouth University was to digitise the LBC/IRN Archive and create a complete on line searchable database. The archive covered the period 1973 – 1996 and contained recordings relating to news, current affairs features and dramas. The objectives were to select relevant material, create a catalogue based on existing information, digitise the tapes, then to place the audio and catalogue on a website available to Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE).
Overall Approach
The digitisation work was contracted to a supplier through the EU tender process. The information on the card index and legacy computer was converted into a single file. The Digitisation supplier provided each tape and its associated information, along with specialised software that allowed each audio clip to be segmented. A team of cataloguers was employed by Bournemouth University to enrich the information for each segment. The Digitisation supplier provided the information in a recognised structure, along with its enriched information and the associated audio clip. The Information and the audio clips were given to British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) for loading onto a website, which is available to HE and FE behind the Athens password security.
The project had five critical phases all of which were successfully achieved, and the project can be considered a success. The five phases are 1, The Tendering process. 2, Project Setup. 3, Project Delivery. 4, Legal. 5, Promotion. All the phases have been achieved with Promotion still on going.
Achievements
The principal achievement of the project has been to provide greater accessibility to the data for the purposes of research. The records of early commercial radio were held on 10 inch reel tapes in a bespoke storage facility, along with catalogue information which provided supplementary detail referencing the audio. Without this project these important radio transmissions would have been virtually lost to posterity through their inaccessibility. These tapes, along with updated catalogue information, are now available on the web with intuitive and user-friendly search facilities.
Conclusion
The project has been conducted and finished along the lines of the original aims and objectives that were stated at the outset, when the project plan was submitted. From the original collection of 7,000 tapes 3,804 were selected for digitisation and 2,850 hours (the number is an approximation at the time of writing) of audio have been made available along with the associated metadata; this has been placed on the web behind the Athens security password protection.