There is coming, I think, a great change in how we discover things on the Internet. It is one which will play a major part in making the moving image central to knowledge and research, which is the goal that I am trying to pursue professionally. The great change will be brought about by speech-to-textRead More
The BBC has just celebrated its ninetieth anniversary (November 14th to be precise), though the current storm clouds hanging over the Corporation have possibly dampened the fervour. Nevertheless the BBC has marked ninety years of radio broadcasts (BBC television did not begin officially until 1936) in a number of ways, including Radio Reunited, a simultaneousRead More
At the British Library we have been digitising some of our film and video collection. It’s a collection that has been built up not with an overall moving image resource in mind, but rather as a reflection of the interest of particular curators. So the collection does not cover all subjects, instead specialising in certainRead More
I’ve been thinking about news lately. At the British Library we’ve just piloted a television and radio news service, called Broadcast News, which has selected news broadcasts from May 2010 onwards taken from seventeen channels available on Freeview and Freesat. But the service can’t just stand alone. It has to join up with other newsRead More
I spent a fascinating, exhausting and illuminating two days last weekend attending the conference of the Federation of International Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA), which was held at the British Library. FIAT/IFTA is a representative body for those archives, commercial and public sector, that care for the world’s television heritage (its film equivalent is FIAF, the internationalRead More
A few months ago I came across two wax cylinders in an antique shop in my home town of Rochester. They both had beautiful cardboard tube covers, one for Edison Bell, the other for Clarion, though as I was to discover the cylinders inside did not match the desciptions of the music on the outsideRead More