A National Broadcast Archive for Wales – Opening up our Archives (without video, revised)
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As presented by Einion Gruffudd and Edith Hughes at the FIAT/IFTA 2018 World Conference in Venice
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A National Broadcast Archive for Wales – Opening up our Archives (without video, revised)
- 8. ITV
- 10. BBC Cymru Wales’ Archive British Broadcasting Company was established in 1922 BBC’s first broadcast from Wales was in February 1923 No recordings from early years – all live Scripts and programme schedules/running orders have survived.
- 11. BBC Wales’ early assets – the War Years • WW2 – reporting the conflict on radio • BBC relocated its Light Entertainment department to Wales for safety • Early content includes: - Radio Plays/education & schools programmes - News and sport – reflecting output that was to remain our core programming for decades to come.
- 12. 1950’s, 1960’s 1970’s • Output expanded to include all genres – drama, education, • Broadcast in Welsh and English on radio and TV • Radio Wales and Radio Cymru both launched in 1978 - celebrating 40 years • We now have a valuable visual record of the people’s lives, culture, traditions, fashions, interests of the people of Wales
- 13. Broadcast Landscape in Wales • BBC Wales – funded through the licence fee • ITV Wales – commercially funded franchise in Wales • S4C – Welsh language channel launched in 1982 • Prior to 1982, Welsh language programming was provided by BBC and ITV
- 14. Use of the content • Valuable resource for BBC production teams • Archive agreement with S4C – independent production companies can use BBC Wales Welsh language content free of charge • Commercial value – licensing to broadcast customers
- 15. The Present • BBC Wales is relocating to new premises in Cardiff city centre (Autumn 2019) • We will be co-locating with S4C and are merging Technology and Operations teams • New building will have a smaller footprint • Significant investment in digitizing BBC Wales archive holdings • S4C digitising their collections separately
- 16. BBC Wales Central Square
- 17. Archive preparations Moving over 90 years’ worth of content doesn’t happen overnight…!
- 18. AV & AudioDigitization • We have digitised 64,000 AV tapes (Beta SP, Beta SX, Digibeta and HD) • Digitized AV has been ingested into the BBC Digital Archive • Digitization for access, not for preservation • Minimum/existing metadata for digitization/ingest • Format conversion only – no metadata enhancement
- 19. Audio Digitization • 97,000 audio assets (1/4”, DATS, Minidiscs) • Digitization for access, not for preservation • 1,300 fails - less than 1% • Digitized assets ingested into the BBC Radio Digital Archive • Minimum/existing metadata for digitization/ingest • Format conversion only – no metadata enhancement • AV and Audio project completed in 24 months
- 20. Film Digitization • 13,000 film cans • Film digitization was initially out of scope – • 75% had already been transferred to tape • Plan A (relocation) didn’t work out • Business case put together with Fast Forward • Pilot successfully completed • 1300 hours of news and sport – complete by October 2019
- 21. There’s still much to do We continue to work our other collections. These include: A written Corporate Archive A large collection of programme paperwork, scripts, schedules. A large photographic stills collection Decommissioning, donating and disposing of assets that weren’t selected for retention
- 22. File Based Delivery • BBC Wales moved to file based delivery in October 2014 • Implemented an interim MAM system • Long term MAM to be implemented in new building • Working towards a fully digital end to end broadcast workflow and adopting IP technology
- 23. The Future • We’re stepping into a brave new world • A period of major change for everyone – both scary and exciting • Role of archivist being scrutinised and challenged • Technology and automation vs skills and knowledge • Moving towards self-serve as a model – metadata needs to be fit for purpose
- 24. So what next? • We have a responsibility to safeguard and preserve the original assets – we don’t know what the future holds! • Converting from analogue to digital is only part of the story – we want people to search, browse, download and use the content , and not just within the BBC • We want to share this cultural and historical treasure with the people of Wales
- 25. Preservation Preserve over 180,000 items of the BBC Broadcast Archive, in both physical and digital format, and related material in a new purpose built storage facility Presence Open four Clip Centres at different locations across Wales attracting over 20,000 visitors per annum Access New ways of searching and discovering digitised media, including new terminals and a new website. At least 1,000 clips online, and over 1,000,000 views per year. Engagement Involve over 1,600 people in interpreting the archive and developing its use. Over 300 interactive events including over 100 events in Pioneer areas
- 26. ∙ Sense of Place: Local volunteers develop compilations of material to tell stories about their location/community/group. ∙ ReMaking Memories: Local volunteers tell their own stories digitally, using a combination of broadcast material, other resources and related oral histories ∙ Clip Creative: Original, creative activities exploring new ways of using the archive in different artistic and cultural contexts for the purpose of producing creative outputs ∙ Clip Cymraeg: Welsh learners use the archive to assist with learning the language ∙ Learning Clip: Use of the broadcast archive as an educational resource explored ∙ Access to All Areas: Volunteers participate in tasks that will improve access to the collection, including enhancing descriptions and metadata to enable more people to discover material in the archive and offering assistance to those visiting the CLIP Centres Engagement Activities
Editor's Notes
- Thanks very much for the invite, and the opportunity to address you about "A National Broadcast Archive for Wales - opening up our archive" I'm Einion Gruffudd, a project manager at the National Library of Wales. My colleague, Edith, is head of Archives at BBC Wales, she will speak shortly Before we continue I'd like to talk just a little bit about Wales
- We are not an independent country, but about 3 million people live in Wales, and we do have a football team, and many other institutions including our own government, which funds us. Many things are organised at a Wales level, we have a national Museum of Wales, national opera, national theatre, national botanic garden. We have our own Language
- About half a million people speak Welsh, and it is used in broadcasting today. If you haven’t seen it before this is a Welsh news page by the BBC. But this language is not new, it's been used for far longer than the English language. • We have manuscripts from the 13th Century, transcribing poetry written in the 8th century, describing events from the 6th century, • A version of Welsh was spoken during, and before the Romans invaded Britain.
- This is a slide of a legal text written in the Welsh Language outlining a code prepared originally in the 10th Century. This is a copy made in the 13th century. The English didn't start using their own language for legal documents at all until the 14th century.
- That was one of many treasures held at the National Library of Wales. This is located not in the Capital City, Cardiff, but in Aberystwyth, a small university town on the West coast. And to call this a Library does not do it justice. In a country the size of Wales many functions can become merged
- As you can see we have not just millions of books and newspapers, but also manuscripts, I just showed you one, there are over 30,000 of them. There are also archives and maps, works of art and photographs. We have already a substantial audiovisual archive, over 7,000,000 feet of film and 250,000 hours of video.
- NLW’s audiovisual collection is based on collecting material from various individuals and institutions. It is very varied and includes film dating back 1898 to 1900, wax cylinders, vinyl records, various cassette formats, discs and digital storage In 2001 the archive was expanded with the incorporation of the Welsh Film archive.
- In 2012 the National Library of Wales acquired it’s first major deposit of broadcast material from the ITV Wales. This is the ITV franchise in Wales, a large collection of over 250,000 items, film and video, dating back to 1958. About 10% of this collection has been digitised.
- In the past two years we have been working closely with the BBC Wales, who also obviously have a large archive, not only television but also radio, going all the way back to 1923. Which Edith will describe to you shortly This is transformational for the Library, with the addition of this large archive we have most of Wales’ broadcasting heritage, and we are also developing a relationship with the other major Welsh Broadcaster in Wales, S4C, the Welsh language Channel All of this together means we have to take full responsibility for the collection, we are not just an archive which has broadcast material, we are Wales’ National Broadcast Archive, we have to think much more about how this medium is preserved, interpreted, and accessed. These are matters we have been discussing a lot with the BBC. Now it is time for me to hand over to Edith
- In 2017/18 – BBC Wales produced 348 hours of news and current affairs programmes, plus an additional 94 hours of non-news content
- S4C will maintain their own library and archive team but the BBC will be responsible for providing technical solutions
- And this is where we start the partnership with the National Library of Wales
- Sincoe 2016 BBC Wales and the National Library of Wales have been working together developing ways of sharing the archive with the people of Wales A project has been designed to cover the whole process of transferring the collection and developing it further as a part of the Library’s National Broadcast Archive You can see the four key elements of the project here: You as an audience are likely to be very familiar with the preservation element, where we need to physically store the whole archive. Note – as the collection has already been digitised we have no plans for further digitisation here. The presence element is more original. As archives are only allowed to show material on site for study purposes, we are planning to open new sites across Wales, called Clip Centres. While Wales is a small country the road and rail communications are poor, it takes over four hours for people to get from one end to the other, and most of the population will need two to three hours to get to Aberystwyth. Opening three new centres in different parts of the country means that it will be much more practical for people to study the contents of this archive. The access aspect means providing developing an interface, based on a new MAM, which makes it possible for people to discover what is in the archive, and also to provide some of the collection online. The final element, engagement – how to get people to use the archive, I will explain on the next slide
- As you see, we have thought hard about how to get people to use the broadcast archive. We are starting from a base of the archive currently mainly being used by professional media people, very little by the general public. We aim to change this. The Sense of Place project sets up local groups to select material which will be used in the Clip Centres to showcase the archive. The ReMaking Memories project goes further, works with the broadcast archive alongside other archive material, and works with local people who here tell digital stories of their local history, which will again be showcased in the Clip Centres. Clip Creative is a part of the project committed to discover new ways of using the archive, artistically, culturally, as a backdrop to poetry, music, dance, part of new videos etc. Clip Cymraeg – there are about half a million people who speak Welsh, but the Welsh Government wants to raise this to a million by 2050. This archive can be used to help people learn Welsh, about 36% of the video in the BBC Wales archive is in the Welsh Language, and about 50% of the sound. (About 40% of the ITV archive is also in Welsh) With such variety of uses of the Welsh language recorded here, we should be able to enrich the process of learning Welsh substantially Learning Clip – this is about using the broadcast archive educationally. Two of the Clip Centres are planned to be located in a college and an University – the material from the archive, and the searching of it can be embedded directly in various courses, but it can also be introduced to school children, and used in other life long learning courses Access to All areas – this is about using volunteers to enrich metadata.
- NLW has a good record on working with volunteers, and in fact won an UK-wide award in 2016. I personally worked on a crowdsourcing website which had 1300 contributors. The aim of the “Access to all areas” element in the project is to involve volunteers in many different ways to enrich the metadata, add transcriptions, keywords, possibly support or correct voice to text outputs. They can also find where metadata is most needed, look at reports of which assets are not being used, and help resolve those problems. NLW has a crowdsourcing platform which we may use to assist with some of the work. For all these activities, cooperation with the BBC has been crucial, identifying what rights need to be cleared, the high and low risk areas of work, what metadata which is available, and where there is most potential for enrichment. Involving people is of course a certain way of ensuring that you have a service which benefits them, is relevant and a part of the community, and contributes to the nation, and releases all the potential value which is hidden in our archives. The following video gives a summary of our project as it stands, it is actually aimed at funraising, we are still looking for more support for the project. We are happy to receive questions after this video.