Learning on Screen - The British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) is a representative body promoting the production, study and use of

moving image A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

, sound and related media for learning and research. It is a company limited by guarantee, with charity status, serving

schools A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of ...

colleges A college (Latin: ''collegium'') may be a tertiary education, tertiary educational institution (sometimes awarding academic degree, degrees), part of a collegiate university, an institution offering vocational education, a further educatio ...

and post

compulsory education Compulsory education refers to a period of education that is required of all people and is imposed by the government. This education may take place at a registered school or at home or other places. Compulsory school attendance or compulsory sc ...

interests in the UK.

History

Founded in 1948 as the ''British Universities Film Council'', the ''BUFC'' was established by a group of academic staff from various subject disciplines across the arts,

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

and

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

s. In the 1960s the ''BUFC'' was allocated core funding from government as a

grant-in-aid A grant-in-aid is money allocated from a central/state government to subnational governments to provide specific services or fund specific projects. Such funding is usually used when the government and the legislature decide that the recipient ...

body of the

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

(BFI). In 1982 the ''Council'' left the BFI with the remit to engage with UK

higher education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...

, changed its title to British Universities Film ''& Video'' Council and obtained recurrent core grant direct from the Department for Education and Science. In the early 1990s, with the re-organisation of UK higher education funding, the BUFVC's PES line was moved to the

Higher Education Funding Council for England The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom, which was responsible for the distribution of funding for higher education to universities and further education colleges in Engl ...

(HEFCE) and was paid over via

The Open University The Open University (OU) is a Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate ...

. Since 2015, the BUFVC became known as Learning on Screen.

Governance

Learning on Screen is governed by a board of Trustees who are, largely, elected from the membership. Learning on Screen has a small staff team and is based in offices in central London. A not-for-profit independent organisation, Learning on Screen is mainly funded by membership fees and subscriptions.

Learning on Screen's Services and Databases

Learning on Screen offers a range of specialist services and aims to know more about moving image and sound content, its meaning, context and scholarly value, than any other UK-based educational body. Some of Learning on Screen's services are delivered online worldwide without charge, whereas other services are only offered under authenticated access to users in the UK or to staff in Learning on Screen member institutions. At the heart of Learning on Screen is a specialist Information Service. This is the source of much of Learning on Screen's information which is published online. Learning on Screen's termly magazine ''ViewFinder''. The main online databases/online resources currently delivered by Learning on Screen are: TRILT–Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching which offers the best online information describing broadcast content received from over 500 channels of

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

and

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

and delivered in the UK since 1923. The service currently carries some 36 million records and accumulates data at a rate of 1.3 million records per year. Data is delivered 10 days in advance of transmission and TRILT offers a customisable alert service for users. Users from UK licensed educational establishments which are Learning on Screen members, may also order copies of programmes on DVD or CD post-transmission. (under authenticated access only). You may also try the Demonstration version, which is in open access. The Researcher's Guide to Screen Heritage is an online directory to UK archives and collections of artefacts relating to the history of moving image and sound. This resource is delivered in open access. News On Screen contains the world's leading resource for the study of newsreels and cinemagazines. The ''British Universities Newsreel Database'' (BUND) carries information on more than 180,000 cinema

newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news, news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a Movie theater, cinema, newsreels were a source of cu ...

stories released into British cinemas between 1911 and 1979. This resource is delivered in open access. Three large-scale online resources, which are archive collections of

Independent Local Radio Independent Local Radio is the collective name given to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom. As a result of the buyouts and mergers permitted by the Broadcasting Act 1990, and deregulation resulting from the Communications Act 2 ...

recordings, are delivered to bona fide users in UK higher and further education in collaboration with

Bournemouth University Bournemouth University is a public university in Bournemouth, England, with its main campus situated in neighbouring Poole. The university was founded in 1992; however, the origins of its predecessor date back to the early 1900s. The universi ...

Learning on Screen Television and Radio Services

Learning on Screen Off-Air Recording Back-Up Service - Learning on Screen records and retains, under licence and

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

exception, some 44,000 hours per year of UK television and radio content. Nearly two decades of these recordings are held from June 1998 onwards. The channels recorded are:

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television b ...

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

BBC Three BBC Three is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was first launched on 9 February 2003 with programmes for a 16 to 34-year-old target aud ...

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

ITV1 ITV1 (formerly known as ITV) is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the British media company ITV plc. It provides the ITV (TV network), Channel 3 ...

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

More4 More4 is a British free-to-air television channel, owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The channel launched on 10 October 2005. Its programming mainly focuses on lifestyle and documentaries, as well as foreign dramas. Content The i ...

, Channel 5,

Sky News Sky News is a British free-to-air television news channel, live stream news network and news organisation. Sky News is distributed via an English-language radio news service, and through online channels. It is owned by Sky Group, a division of ...

and

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 ...

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

and

BBC Radio 4 Extra BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC Radio 7) is a British digital radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It mostly broadcasts archived repeats of comedy, drama and documentary programmes, and is the sister station of Radio 4. It is the pri ...

are also now recorded and retained. Copies may only be supplied to staff in subscribing member institutions which also hold an Educational Recording Agency (ERA) licence. BoB (Box of Broadcasts) this is a shared online service for universities and colleges in the UK which also have current ERA licences. It offers staff and students the opportunity to record and retain streamed copies of programmes (and extracts from programmes) in their own personal online play-lists. It is a form of scholarly 'see it again/hear it again' service which retains programme copies as long as the users require them to be retained (unlike most broadcasters' equivalent online services which retain copies for a relatively short time only). As of July 2022 it contained over 3 million broadcasts. TV Times Index (TVTip) provides a unique searchable index to the London edition of the TVTimes, the listings magazine for ITV broadcasts, from September 1955 to March 1985. TVTiP allows users to search for programmes, production staff and performers. It contains approximately 250,000 records. This Week was a leading ITV current affairs series, running from January 1956 to December 1992. From 1978 to 1986 it was known as ''TVEye''. The This Week database is a record of the entire production history of the series. It has been enhanced by the contributions of expert researchers and information shared with the project by FremantleMedia and used with their permission. This Week is accessed via the Learning on Screen website and is authenticated by Athens jointly with the TV Times Project database (TVTiP). It is free at point of access to all staff and students in further and higher education institutions in the United Kingdom and to Learning on Screen members.

News on Screen

Learning on Screen is responsible for the world's leading resource for the study of newsreels and cinemagazines, at the heard of which is a central database holding over 180,000 records. Associated with these records are 80,000 downloadable documents offered as PDFs taken from original documentation (scripts, running orders, dope sheets and

ephemera Ephemera are items which were not originally designed to be retained or preserved, but have been collected or retained. The word is etymologically derived from the Greek ephēmeros 'lasting only a day'. The word is both plural and singular. On ...

) from the original news production files. Additionally, the database can be used to access some 40,000

British Pathe British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and cultur ...

items online. The BUND also carries information on content delivered as Cinemagazines - longer form single subject items included in British cinema programmes and some which were only shown to overseas audiences. This resource is delivered open access as part of the ''News On Screen'' section of the website. Learning on Screen has also published several books related to this area including ''Yesterday's News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader'' (2002, ) edited by Luke Mckernan; ''Filming History: The memoirs of John Turner, newsreel cameraman'' (2001, ) and ''Projecting Britain: The Guide to British Cinemagazines'' (2008, ) edited by Emily Crosby and Linda Kaye.

Shakespeare in Film, Television, Radio and Online

One of Learning on Screen's main educational resources is its International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio. This authoritative online database of

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

-related content is continually growing and is international in scope. It holds over 9,600 records dating from the 1890s to the present day. Learning on Screen has also published two books on the subject: ''As You Like It: Audiovisual Shakespeare'' () edited by Cathy Grant (1992) and ''Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio: The Researcher's Guide'' () edited by Olwen Terris, Eve-Marie Oesterlen and Luke McKernan (2009).

Learning on Screen Publishing

Learning on Screen publishes the termly journal ''ViewFinder' online.

Learning on Screen Events

Annually, Learning on Screen holds the Learning on Screen Awards. Learning on Screen also organises a range of courses on need-to-know topics for university staff and researchers.

References

External links

*
On Demand

HEFCE

JISC
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bufvc Television archives in the United Kingdom Higher education organisations based in the United Kingdom