Electronic resources: BBC has launched the project of the audio-visual archives

In partnership, the BBC, British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) and JISC today announce the launch of Chronicle, a project to make BBC Northern Ireland’s television news from the 1960s and 1970s available to the academic community online.

The audio-visual archives of the BBC contain a wealth of material gathered since it was founded in the 1920s, but they remain largely inaccessible, held on film or videotape and managed to serve the needs of programme-makers within the BBC.

Chronicle makes part of that archive available to UK higher and further education by digitising news and current affairs programmes from the BBC Northern Ireland’s vaults.

This gives teachers, students and researchers the chance to explore and immerse themselves in the events over an important period (1963-1976) of Northern Ireland’s history, delivering a rich and contextual experience from a political, historical and cultural perspective.

After several years of informal collaboration between the BBC and JISC, today also marks the start of a new partnership as the two organizations sign a Memorandum of Understanding, to support the promotion of their common purposes, especially with regard to education, learning and culture. 

Signed by Caroline Thomson, BBC Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Secretary, Professor Martyn Harrow at the New Broadcasting House and managed by a joint steering committee, the MOU will enable the two organisations to develop their joint interest in encouraging the creation and use of a wide range of audio visual and cultural assets to support education, research and public use.  

Chronicle will provide authenticated users with access to digitised copies of news and current affairs material covering Northern Ireland and ‘The Troubles’, along with web-based tools allowing them to be searched, viewed and annotated.

Other advantages of this project are considerable, not least as there exists very little audiovisual content, covering Northern Ireland historically, politically or culturally during the sixties and seventies in any depth, even though a number of organisations and academics have indicated a ‘significant need’ for such materials.

Additionally, there was a strong archival need to digitise the material from the period: between 1963 and 1981 news material was recorded on 16mm film and a significant proportion of this footage is now in need of preservation.

The project has also been shaped by an academic steering group made up of scholars from participating institutions (University of Westminster, Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Ulster, St Mary’s University College and Royal Holloway University of London) who are reviewing the academic value of the project as it runs.