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BBC Archives are collections documenting the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

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's broadcasting history, including copies of television and radio broadcasts, internal documents, photographs, online content, sheet music, commercially available music, BBC products (including toys, games, merchandise, books, publications, and program releases on VHS, Beta, Laserdisc, DVD, vinyl, audio cassette, audio book CD, and Blu Ray), press cuttings, artifacts and historic equipment. The original contents of the collections are permanently retained but are in the process of being digitised. Some collections are being uploaded to the BBC Archives section of the

BBC Online BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and BBC Sport, Sport, the on-demand video and radio services branded BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, t ...

website for visitors to view. The archive is one of the largest broadcast archives in the world, with over 15 million items.

Overview

The BBC Archives encompass numerous collections containing materials produced and acquired by the BBC. The earliest material dates back to 1890. The archives contain 15 million items on 60 miles of shelving spread over several sites, and include approximately 1 million hours of playable media. Items are managed using a bar code system for locating stored items and tracking items that have been lent out. The BBC says that the budget for managing, protecting and digitising the archive accounts for only a small part of its overall budget. The BBC is engaging in an ongoing project to digitise and preserve their entire archived programme material, migrating (transferring) recordings made on older analogue formats such as film, audio tape, videotape, vinyl, wax cylinders etc on to today's latest electronic formats as digital files, which are compatible with modern computer hardware and software equipment and systems. BBC Archives is constantly preserving, cataloguing and digitising its physical formats in order to safeguard material that is physically deteriorating for the future. Where their aim is to eventually create a complete digital archive where they no longer have to use now obsolete media formats and their respective equipment used for playing and migrating physical formats on to other physical formats. The BBC can instead then to continue to preserve original master material in their secure vaults. BBC Archives has contingencies in place when digitising material so that digitised copies are not accidentally overwritten, encrypted, deleted, incorrectly catalogued, incorrectly labelled and no more than one copy of each (other than various back up spare copies and other copies at various different sites) is digitised into the BBC Digital Archives. Much of the audio-visual material was originally recorded on formats which are now obsolete and incompatible with modern broadcast equipment due to the fact that the machines used to reproduce many formats are no longer being manufactured. Additionally, some film and audio formats are slowly disintegrating, and digitisation also serves as a digital preservation programme. The BBC Archive website was relaunched online in 2008 and has provided newly released historical material regularly since then. The BBC works in partnership with the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...

(BFI),

The National Archives National archives are central archives maintained by countries. This article contains a list of national archives. Among its more important tasks are to ensure the accessibility and preservation of the information produced by governments, both ...

and other partners in working with and using the materials. In 2012, BBC Archive Development produced a book - primarily aimed as BBC staff - titled 'BBC Archive Collections: What's In The Archive And How To Use Them'. This book describes the BBC's archive collections and offers guidance around on how items from the collections can be reused online.

Buildings

From 1963 to 2010, the majority of television material of nationally networked programmes in the BBC Archive were housed at the archive centre in Windmill Road, Brentford, in

west London West London is the western part of London, England, north of the River Thames, west of the City of London, and extending to the Greater London boundary. The term is used to differentiate the area from the other parts of London: North Londo ...

. Television programmes were also stored by the Open University in Milton Keynes, and by BBC nations and regional libraries around the country. In the late 1990s, and early in the 2000s material from the radio side of the BBC were also stored on the site. The condition of the three Windmill Road buildings deteriorated over the years and suffered occasional flooding incidents, and eventually the archive was relocated to a new centre at Perivale Park,

Perivale Perivale () is an area of Greater London, west of Charing Cross. It is the smallest of the seven towns which make up the London Borough of Ealing. Perivale is mostly residential, with a library, community centre, a number of parks and open ...

, three miles north of the old site. The new BBC Archive Centre was opened in Summer 2010 and all material was successfully moved by March 2011. Material is stored in thirteen vaults, controlled to match the best climate for the material inside them, and named after a different BBC personality depending on the content contained in them. In addition to the vaults, new editing, preservation and workrooms have been added so that the material can easily be transferred between formats as well as viewed, restored and digitised for future posterity. The building has also been fitted with fire suppression systems to protect the archive in the event of an incident at the centre, so the total loss of the archive is avoided. As of April 2019, BBC Archives employs around 200 staff, most of whom are based at the Archive Centre in Perivale.

Television Archive

The BBC Television Archive contains over 1.5 million tape items as well as over 600,000 cans of film material. The archive itself holds extensive material from approximately the mid-1970s onwards, when important recordings at the broadcaster were retained for the future. Recordings from before this date are less comprehensively preserved; the process of telerecording was originally invented in 1947 while videotape recording was gradually introduced from the late 1950s onwards, but due to the expense of the tapes, recording was seen for production use only with recordings subsequently being lost. or telerecordings being junked. The exceptions in the early years were usually occasions of great importance, such as the

coronation of Queen Elizabeth II The coronation of Elizabeth II took place on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey in London. She acceded to the throne at the age of 25 upon the death of her father, George VI, on 6 February 1952, being proclaimed queen by her privy and executive ...

. In addition, numerous programmes at the time were broadcast 'live' and so utilised no recording procedure in the production process. The earliest item in the collection is from 1936. Today, the majority of programmes are kept, including news, entertainment, drama and a selection of other long-running programmes such as quiz shows. The remaining material from the television archive is offered to the

prior to being disposed of.

Sound Archive

The BBC Sound Archive contains the archived output from the BBC's radio output. Widespread recordings exist in the archive from the mid-1930s, when recording of programmes and speeches were kept for rebroadcast; the catalyst for this was the launch of the BBC Empire Service in 1932 and the subsequent rebroadcast of speeches from political leaders at a time convenient in the different time zones. Prior to this, the broadcast of recordings was seen as being false to the listener and was avoided. Any recordings made were frequently disposed of and it was the efforts of Marie Slocombe, who founded the Sound Archive in 1937 when she retained recordings of prominent figures in the country, that the archive became into being officially when she was appointed the Sounds Recording Librarian in 1941. Today, all of the BBC's radio output is recorded for re-use, with approximately 66% of output being preserved in the Archives; programmes involving guests or live performances from artists are kept whereas programmes in which the DJ plays commercially available music are only sampled and not kept entirely. Prior to any material being disposed of, the material is offered to the

British Library Sound Archive The British Library Sound Archive, formerly the British Institute of Recorded Sound; also known as the National Sound Archive (NSA), in London, England is among the largest collections of recorded sound in the world, including music, spoken word a ...

. The archive consists of multiple formats including

wax cylinders Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for Sound recording and reproduction, recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity (c. 1896–1916), these hollow cylinder, cylind ...

, numerous

gramophone records A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near ...

made from both shellac and vinyl. as well as numerous more recordings on tape, CD and on digital audio tape (DAT). The difficulty of these different formats is the availability of the machines required to play them; some of the records in the archive are 16 inches in diameter and require large phonograph units to play, while the players for the wax cylinders and DATs are no longer in production. There are also 700,000 vinyl records, 180,000 78's records, 400,000 LP record and 350,000 Cd's in the archive. The Radio Digital Archive has been capturing radio programmes as broadcast quality wav files since 2008, with now over 1.5 million recordings growing daily. Some of the wax cylinder collection has been donated to the British Library. The Sound Archive is based at the BBC Archive Centre in Perivale, along with the television archive, and was previously based at Windmill Road, Brentford.

Written Archives

The BBC Written Archives contain all the internal written documents and communications from the corporation from the launch in 1922 to the present day. Its collections shed light into the behind the scenes workings of the corporation and also elaborate on the difficulties of getting a television or radio programme to or off the air as the case may be. The archive guidelines state that access to files post-1980 is restricted due to the current nature of the files; the general exception to this rule are documents such as scripts and Programme as Broadcast records. The Written Archives are located at the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham, Berkshire, near Reading. The centre houses the archive on four and a half miles of shelving along with reading rooms. The centre is different from the other BBC Archives in that the centre opens for writers and academic researchers in higher education.

Photographic Library

The BBC Photographic Library is responsible for approximately 7 million images, dating back to 1922, created for publicity purposes and subsequently kept for future use. In addition to programme promotion, a large number of images are of historic events which are often incorporate into the daily news bulletins; as a result, half the photographic library team work specifically with these images. The images themselves are kept as originals in the archive, with digitisation only utilised when a specific image is required for use, when the image is sent in a digital format. Copies of images are also used in case any images are damaged due to vinegar syndrome and other issues. The most requested images from the Archive include Colin Firth in '' Pride and Prejudice'',

Michael Parkinson Sir Michael Parkinson (born 28 March 1935) is an English broadcaster, journalist and author. He presented his television talk show '' Parkinson'' from 1971 to 1982 and from 1998 to 2007, as well as other talk shows and programmes both in the U ...

interviewing Muhammad Ali,

Martin Bashir Martin Henry Bashir (born 19 January 1963) is a British journalist. He was a presenter on British and American television and for the BBC's ''Panorama'' programme, for which he interviewed Diana, Princess of Wales in 1995. Although the intervie ...

interviewing Diana, Princess of Wales and a picture of

Delia Derbyshire Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 – 3 July 2001) was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out notable work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme ...

at work in the Radiophonic workshop at the BBC.

Archive Treasure Hunt

At the turn of the millennium, the BBC launched the BBC Archive Treasure Hunt, a public appeal to recover pre-1980s lost BBC radio and television productions. Original material of many programmes was lost due to the practice of discarding recordings because of the need to reduce costs, copyright issues and for technical reasons. The resolution of this appeal was that over one hundred productions were recovered including ''

The Men from the Ministry ''The Men from the Ministry'' is a British radio comedy series broadcast by the BBC between 1962 and 1977, starring Wilfrid Hyde-White, Richard Murdoch and, from 1966, when he replaced Hyde-White, Deryck Guyler. Written and produced by Edwar ...

'', '' Something To Shout About'', ''

Man and Superman ''Man and Superman'' is a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to a call for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. ''Man and Superman'' opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London o ...

'', '' The Doctor's Dilemma'', ''

I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again ''I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again'' (often abbreviated as ''ISIRTA'') was a BBC radio comedy programme that originated from the 1964 Cambridge University Footlights revue, '' Cambridge Circus''. This is a scripted sketch show. It had a devote ...

'', '' Hancock's Half Hour'', '' I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue'', and ''

The Ronnie Corbett Thing Ronald Balfour Corbett (4 December 1930 – 31 March 2016) was a Scottish actor, broadcaster, comedian and writer. He had a long association with Ronnie Barker in the BBC television comedy sketch show ''The Two Ronnies''. He achieved promine ...

'' in addition to recording sessions with Elton John, Ringo Starr and Paul Simon. In addition, the Peter Sellers Estate Collection donated numerous recordings featuring

Peter Sellers Peter Sellers (born Richard Henry Sellers; 8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980) was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series ''The Goon Show'', featured on a number of hit comic songs ...

Creative Archive Licence

The BBC together with the

, the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

and Teachers' TV formed a collaboration, named the Creative Archive Licence Group, to create a copyright licence for the re-release of archived material. The Licence was a trial, launched in 2005, and notable for the re-release of part of the

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

' archive and programmes made by the

BBC Natural History Unit The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including '' ...

for creative use by the public. While artists and teachers were encouraged to use the content to create works of their own, the terms of the licence were restrictive compared to

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...

licences. Use of Creative Archive content for commercial, "endorsement, campaigning, defamatory or derogatory purposes" was forbidden, any derivative works were to be released under the same licence, and content was only to be used within the UK. The trial ended in 2006 following a review by the

BBC Trust The BBC Trust was the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) between 2007 and 2017. It was operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and its stated aim was to make decisions in the best interests of ...

and works released under the licence were withdrawn.

Voices from the Archives

Voices from the Archives was a former

...
project, launched in partnership with BBC Four that provided free access to audio interviews with various notable people and professions from a variety of political, religious and social backgrounds. The website ceased to be updated in June 2005, and the concept was instead adopted by

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

as a collection of film interviews from various programmes.

Heritage Collection

The BBC Heritage Collection is the newest of the BBC Archives and holds historic broadcast technology, art, props and merchandise. The collection was created out of personal collections and bequeaths by former staff members, as the BBC had no formal policy on the heritage collection until c.2003. The collection includes, amongst other items, the BBC One Noddy Globe and clock, a BBC-Marconi Type A microphone, an early crystal radio made by the British Broadcasting Company, a Marconi/EMI camera used in the early BBC Television experiments, a

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

computer and a selection of items used to create Foley effects on soundtracks. In addition to all the broadcast technology, art is also kept, namely the portraits of all the BBC Director Generals, as well as props including an original

TARDIS The TARDIS (; acronym for "Time And Relative Dimension In Space") is a fictional hybrid of the time machine and spacecraft that appears in the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' and its various spin-offs. Its exterior a ...

from '' Doctor Who'' and the children's television puppet Gordon the Gopher. The heritage collection itself has no single permanent home, as the majority of objects are on display, either around BBC properties or on loan to museums or other collections; the most significant museum housing the collection is the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford.

Programme Catalogue

Over the years, the BBC has used various programme catalogue databases to keep a record of the programmes in the archives. Internal databases include

Infax The BBC Programme Catalogue is an online archive of the entire BBC back Library catalog, catalogue of TV and radio programmes. The catalogue is for internal use by the BBC although for a time a beta online version was available to the public. The ...

and

Fabric Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not th ...

, and publicly accessible databases include

BBC Genome The BBC Genome Project is an online searchable database of programme listings initially based upon the contents of the ''Radio Times'' from the first issue in 1923 to 2009. Television listings from post-2009 can be accessed via the BBC Programme ...

an
BBC Programmes

References

External links

BBC Archives

* * * * *
Tech Weekly podcast: In the BBC archives
from ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' website.
BBC Archive Collections: What's In The Archives, And How To Use Them
{{BBC

Archives An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

Databases in the United Kingdom Broadcasting websites History websites of the United Kingdom

Organisations based in Reading, Berkshire History of television in the United Kingdom History of radio BBC history Year of establishment missing Archives in Berkshire Television archives in the United Kingdom