Post on 22-Jan-2018
2017 FIAT Conference Mexico
MEDIA STUDIES COMMISSIONCentre for the History of Television Culture and Production
Academic Access to Television Archives
Lisa Kerrigan John Hill
The challenges of television research
The History of Forgotten Television Drama in the UK: an AHRC-funded research project running from September 2013 – September 2017
looking at histories of unknown, forgotten and critically-neglected TV drama.
Television Drama Conference: Archives, Access and ResearchFebruary 2017, BFI Southbank, London
Rationale: to bring archivists, television professionals and academics together:• to discuss the challenges involved in the provision of
information on, and access to, historical television material • to consider how the relationships between archives,
broadcasters and academic researchers may be further improved
BBC, ITV, BFI, Learning on Screen, British Library, ERA, universities and TV enthusiasts
Co-hosted by BFI, Centre for the History of Television Culture and Production and Learning on Screen
Archives, Access and Research
• Discoverability: how discover what exists
• Accessibility: how gain access to it
• Availability: how widely available is it
Media Studies Commission
Centre for the History of Television Culture and Production.
Primary focus on history of television and television output
Academic Research and Access Survey
5%2%
2%
2%
8%
31%
3%
44%
3%Academic archive
Academic library
Audiovisual Archives of the EuropeanCommission
Commercial archive
Commercial broadcaster
National archive
Not-for-profit educational charity
Public Service broadcaster
Regional archive
(blank)
39 responses
From archives in 23 countries
Is Your Archive Used for Academic Research
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Academicarchive
Academiclibrary
AudiovisualArchives of
the EuropeanCommission
Commercialarchive
Commercialbroadcaster
Nationalarchive
Not-for-profiteducational
charity
Public Servicebroadcaster
Regionalarchive
Occasionally
Often
Rarely
Very Often
Some differences in access policy for academic users
• Reduced fees• Academic researchers are allowed greater access
to some collections than commercial researchers and/or the general public
• Academic researchers are given more staff time and resources
• The main restrictions on access to material relate to copyright (but also availability of viewing copies)
•Is your archive used for academic research?
EUscreen + EUscreenXL
EUscreen is a consortium of broadcasters, archives, television
historians, technologists, designers and educators. It started in
October 2009 as a three-year project funded by the European
Commission’s eContentplus programme. More than 40.000 videos,
photographs and articles representing Europe’s television heritage
have now been made available online through a freely accessible
multilingual portal, now curated by the EUscreen Foundation.
EUscreenXL improved and developed the EUscreen portal. It aligned
audiovisual collections held throughout Europe and connects them
within the audiovisual domain of Europeana, an online online
collection of millions of digitised items from European museums,
libraries and archives.
Are there any particular areas around the history of television you would like to work on with academic
partners? If so, what are they?
• Technical history of broadcasting
• Transnational histories
• The socioeconomic impact of TV in Pakistan
• History of European integration
• Public broadcasting
• Children’s television
• The evolution of TV in Europe
Archives and Academia
Main issues hindering engagement with academic partners on projects:
• Lack of funding
• Lack of staff resources
• In some cases, rights issues
Archives and Academia
Also opportunities for obtaining additional funding and services of academic researchers:• mining new histories, • identifying significance of material, • curating and contextualisation of material• making it more ‘culturally meaningful’• encouraging public awareness of archival
material• enhancing its public and, sometimes,
commercial value
The History of Forgotten Television Drama in the UK
Restorations, screenings, DVD releases, blogs, interviews, conferences and publications.
Would you like to see more direct collaboration between archivists and historians?
There is enormous value to be created from closer collaboration, from better mutual understanding, and from a greater sympathy and interest all round….. but I suspect that neither “side” (although I am reluctant to see the field in those terms) commits sufficient energy and focus to working together. And this is less about a lack of willingness and more to do with the usual constraints of time and resources, and also perhaps the absence of contexts in which discussions and debate can develop and from which specific projects might come (John Wyver, ‘Television history, excavation and the future’, Critical Studies in Television).
Concluding Questions
• What are the benefits of closer collaboration between academics and archives?
• Do we need more contexts in which these might be developed?
• What further steps might be taken?