Online BBC archive up and coming...
"The BBC plans to open up its archive to make a treasure trove of material available to everyone." [ BBC Press Release, August 2003]This is now underway, with beta launch coming up probably around the new year. Programmer Matt Biddulph triumphatorily explains:
Ever wondered what's in that archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there's a huge database that's been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary.Here's a screenshot: searching for John Peel.
I'm the lucky developer who gets to turn this hidden treasure into a public website. No programme downloads yet, but a massive searchable programme catalogue.
"Think IMDB for the BBC, only bigger," writes Ben Hammersley, also involved in the project, and promises a launch into public beta "in the next few weeks". Hammersley, a vocal defender of the concept of a public broadcaster utilising new digital technology to serve the public rather than the vested interests of some dusty copyright holders, wrote in the Guardian earlier this summer on the subject of the BBC Creative Archive:
Unlike other broadcasters, the BBC should be judged by the public good it does. The Creative Archive would be a public good that puts Lord Reith's original remit in the shade.
It isn't a fancy toy for iMovie users: it is a vault of the most important public culture of the past three generations. It is a gift for the future that is so far-sighted, and so much a good thing, that it is the duty of the BBC and, especially, the government to follow through.
So the question is, why are the creative industries in the UK allowed to take public money, without fulfilling the obligation to deliver publicly accessible value? Why is this even an option? We have paid for it, now let us use it.
posted by Jonas Andersson @ 4:48 pm
<< Home