Technology + Creativity at the �鶹Լ�� Feed

The future of searching the past: Transitioning from �鶹Լ�� Redux to Archive Search

2022-05-26T12:05:14+00:00

If you're relatively new to the �鶹Լ��, you may not have heard of �鶹Լ�� Redux. However, for those of us who have been around for a while, Redux is legendary. The brainchild of �鶹Լ�� Research & Development's Chief Scientist, Brandon Butterworth, Redux recorded and stored all programmes broadcast on our national TV channels and radio stations since 2007. These programmes could be found and played back via the Redux website.

Archive Search is now the place to go to find archive content. From next week Archive Search will no longer use Redux to source content. More on that later.

Uses of �鶹Լ�� Redux

In 2007 it was difficult to get hold of audio and video content from the �鶹Լ�� archive in a digital format. Accessing archive content for research generally meant ordering and waiting for VHS tapes or DVDs to be delivered by a �鶹Լ�� mail van. �鶹Լ�� Redux allowed programme-makers to view a growing set of content immediately. It proved extremely popular.

�鶹Լ�� Research & Development also built Snippets - a hugely popular tool with programme-makers - which relied on the content held by �鶹Լ�� Redux. Snippets used the programme subtitles to allow users to search across the spoken word of the programme. Want a clip of Delboy saying, "This time next year, we'll be millionaires"? You got it!

"�鶹Լ�� REDUX has been an invaluable tool, quite revolutionary in its simplicity and comprehensiveness. I really appreciated how the system captured everything, especially the complete coverage of the �鶹Լ�� News Channel output – this has proved invaluable over the years, especially with the current fashion for using audio of news journalists to carry the narrative of many documentaries. The addition of searchable subtitles via Snippets was another great innovation that made it so much easier to interrogate the huge amount of material in the collection. The innovative and imaginative work of the �鶹Լ�� R&D team and their willingness to push forward and make REDUX and SNIPPETS available to all �鶹Լ�� employees is greatly appreciated, and I hope the spirit of that approach will continue to live on in R&D and elsewhere, even as REDUX itself comes to an end."

Stuart Robertson, Archive and Digital Lead, Current Affairs

Over the years, �鶹Լ�� Redux has met many and varying needs, including:

programme research - researching a person or topic as well as finding content suitable to re-use in a new programme
compliance - reviewing programmes in the event of a query or complaint
technical review - helping ensure that �鶹Լ�� broadcasts achieve the expected quality
content delivery in the required format for iPlayer Beta sites, e.g. Nintendo Wii
external online access to content - increasingly important as more of our content is made by independent production companies
education partnerships - enables schools, colleges and universities to make educational use of TV and Radio broadcasts as permitted by copyright law
research projects including academic partnerships, particularly in the field of machine learning

Why are we moving away from �鶹Լ�� Redux?

Since �鶹Լ�� Redux began, access to our archive has changed enormously. A large and ever-increasing proportion of our 100 years of archive is now digitised and available in broadcast quality to programme-makers inside and outside the �鶹Լ��. This includes higher-quality copies of much of the content stored in �鶹Լ�� Redux. Since 2017 all pre-recorded programmes have been delivered for broadcast as digital files and automatically archived. Physical archive loans ceased in February 2021.

We now have �鶹Լ�� Archive Search - a single place to search across approximately 75% of our archive. It will cover even more of the archive in future.

�鶹Լ�� Internet Blog - History of the �鶹Լ�� Redux project

What will I do without �鶹Լ�� Redux?

The unique content recorded by Redux will continue to be available to play and clip in browse quality via Archive Search. New content will be available via Archive Search - just not recorded off-air by Redux.

Archive Search allows users to explore the spoken content of programmes using subtitles and machine-generated transcripts. Users can make clips of relevant parts of a programme, and for some content, they can even make broadcast-quality clips ready for inclusion in a new programme.

Our curators routinely update archive collections to support production teams, particularly in advance of upcoming events, anniversaries and seasons. These collections are shared on the Archive Search homepage.

Archive Search has allowed us to expand archives access for universities and schools. The entire digitised �鶹Լ�� broadcast archive is now available to students in formal education in the UK.

�鶹Լ�� Media Centre - �鶹Լ�� 100

�鶹Լ�� staff can find training and information on accessing Archive Search by searching on Gateway. If you are working on a �鶹Լ�� commission at an independent production company that would benefit from archive access, your �鶹Լ�� contact can provide this information.

What next for �鶹Լ�� Archives access?

We will soon make Radio Digital Archive content available via Archive Search, giving access to an extensive archive of high-quality audio. We will also provide more programme information within Archive Search to help programme-makers make more informed choices and make re-use easier.

This year we celebrate the �鶹Լ��'s centenary. The Archives Technology & Services team look forward to seeing archive content play a key role in our celebration of and reflection on the �鶹Լ��'s first century.

Hacking the future

2021-07-28T12:25:07+00:00

The �鶹Լ�� is, famously, a creative organisation, and there has been no shortage of imaginative ways to help people feel connected to each other while many of us have been largely working from home. Online team meetings, social events including quizzes, pet shows, yoga and even cookalong sessions have all helped to bring us together, even if it's been via Zoom, Teams or Slack, and working practices for teams have adapted and continue to adapt to ensure that we can be effective.

One challenge has been to provide spaces to meet and collaborate with new people outside our usual teams when we're not in the same buildings. The recent �鶹Լ��100 Hackathon was a great example of what can be achieved, pulling dozens of people from across the �鶹Լ��'s Technology and Product groups into small teams and getting them to work together on shared challenges.

Running across June and July, the hackathon was jointly organised by the �鶹Լ�� and Google Cloud and took place entirely online. It began with a series of online sessions to help people get familiar with Google Cloud services, as not everyone was using them. The main hack took place over two weeks, culminating in a judging day when every team got to present their ideas and get feedback.

As next year is the �鶹Լ��'s centenary, the teams were asked to consider how we could make the best use of our rich history and the material in the �鶹Լ��'s extensive archive to engage future generations, with a view to shaping the next hundred years. The world in 2022 is very different from 1922 when radio was in its infancy, so it felt like a good challenge and allowed participants to explore how modern tools like the BigQuery cloud data warehouse or the image classification capabilities of Vision AI could be used to deliver new �鶹Լ�� services.

Teams were asked to focus on one of four areas:

Education: How can the �鶹Լ�� support schools with educating future generations through the innovative use of technology?
Diversity & Inclusion: How can the �鶹Լ�� provide content and services that are more representative of the entire UK population?
Next-generation: How can the �鶹Լ�� blend broadcasting & digital in a way that enables different interactions with the future generation of the �鶹Լ��?
Content: How can the �鶹Լ�� continue to provide unique, high impact content that's universal?

After the training sessions, each team spent at least two days working on their challenge in the two weeks of the hackathon, with full access to a range of Google Cloud services. However, the intention, as with any hack, was not to produce a fully-featured solution but to do just enough to demonstrate the feasibility of an interesting idea.

And they certainly did that. As one of the judges, along with �鶹Լ�� Chief Design Officer Ellie Runcie and Rich Radley from Google, I got to watch the presentations from the finalists, and it was impressive to see just how much the teams had embraced the challenge, thought through the problem areas, refined their thinking and then delivered a convincing walkthrough.

The winning team, made up of Matt Corbett, Chelsea Ballantyne, Michael O'Malley, Thomas Preece, Michael Maclean and Ben Fields, came from across the division and brought their complementary skills to bear on the pressing issue of encouraging younger audiences to explore more of the �鶹Լ��'s rich collection of programmes.

Their tool lets a viewer take an image from a programme, perhaps the thumbnail used in its programme page, and use the Cloud Vision API to extract as much data as possible about who is in the image, where it was taken, as well as any text. This is then used as the basis for a search across the �鶹Լ��'s collections. This is then used to drive a number of different navigation systems, for example, presenting the material on a timeline to encourage exploration of older material.

So, for example, someone could select a photograph of Stacey Dooley and be offered a range of programmes she has featured in. One possible extension the team discussed was also looking up future programmes and where it includes audience questions – for example, Question Time - letting the user submit questions directly. This connection between archive search, upcoming programmes, and audience interaction was especially imaginative.

As judges, this project impressed us in two ways. First, their idea was simple to describe – though complex to develop, as simple ideas so often are – and second, they had actually built a working end to end solution on top of the cloud services they had available so that we could see it in operation.

The team is now looking at how their idea might work with existing tagging and metadata systems, but the point of a hackathon like this is not to build a working tool but to explore ideas in a creative, stimulating and collaborative way. This certainly seems to have happened with all the teams involved here.

Music Memories and Memory Radio

2019-09-25T09:16:31+00:00

As part of �鶹Լ�� Music Day we are expanding the Music Memories tool, including content for ageing BAME communities living with dementia. We are also launching a Memory Radio service designed by, and for, people living with dementia.

In 2018 I wrote about the launch of �鶹Լ�� Music Memories - a free, globally available website to help people with dementia reconnect with their most powerful memories by finding music from their past, and creating a playlist of personally meaningful music.

Since the initial launch, the �鶹Լ�� has helped bring together more than 100 organisations with an interest in dementia and music, and as a result, during the week of �鶹Լ�� Music Day 2019 (26th September) more than 800 music and dementia events will be taking place around the UK.

On �鶹Լ�� Music Day 2019, we are launching an enhanced version of �鶹Լ�� Music Memories which now includes three new categories of music: In addition to the Popular, Classical and Theme Tunes categories, we have added UK Regional Music, which offers traditional songs from England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland; International Music which offers songs from the 20 countries with the largest ageing immigrant populations living in the UK; and Social Music, which includes nursery rhymes, football songs, pub songs, scout and brownie songs as well as music from the major religions.

People can submit their playlists to the �鶹Լ�� using our anonymous survey. This data will help researchers in music and dementia help others to make recommendations that will help others find their own personally memorable music.

The �鶹Լ�� Music Library team, along with colleagues from around the �鶹Լ�� managed to find hundreds of new tracks in each of the new categories. We hope that there is now some music that will mean something to everyone, regardless of where they are from.

As before, in order to make this service free and globally available, for copyright reasons we have only been able to include 30 seconds of each popular track or 60 seconds for classical music. Once an initial playlist has been created on �鶹Լ�� Music Memories, we would encourage people to use other music services or stores to get hold of the full-length tracks.

We have also launched Memory Radio - three longer-form music and archive-based programmes made specifically for people with dementia, and designed in consultation with people with dementia and professional carers.

There is one Memory Radio show for each of the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s. Each show starts at the beginning of the decade, offering a mixture of music, news archive and popular radio programmes from that year, and then moves forward through the decade.

The programmes might sound a little different to a ‘normal’ radio programme: the pace is deliberately slow and has a consistent level of energy; there are long pauses between each section; and we try to avoid speech over a music track to optimise the clarity of the spoken word. There are small, simple quizzes included in the programmes, and each programme is accompanied by a downloadable Index and Activity Guide which is designed to be used by carers in a family or care home environment to stimulate conversation and reminiscence.

Memory Radio is available on the Music Memories website, on �鶹Լ�� Sounds and on Alexa voice assistants.

Background
If you didn’t read the original blog post from 2018, I’ll describe again some of the thinking and theory behind music and dementia.

Music and Memory

Evidence shows that music can help people with dementia to feel and live better, and we wanted to build on the success of the award-winning �鶹Լ�� Reminiscence Archive, using content from the �鶹Լ��’s archives to help improve the lives of people with dementia.

The thinking behind �鶹Լ�� Music Memories is quite simple, and is based on the principle of the ‘reminiscence bump’ - people tend to recall more from their adolescence and early adulthood - and the phenomenon that structures of the brain that process music can remain intact when other cognitive functions deteriorate.

Musical Reminiscence

Reminiscence work - the recalling and sharing of life events - is increasingly being used to help people with dementia have meaningful conversations with family and carers, and increase their wellbeing and quality of life. Such conversations can be beneficial for both the person with dementia and the families and carers around them.

�鶹Լ�� Music Memories helps people with dementia to find personally meaningful music - perhaps the tracks they listened to as a teenager or in early adulthood - and create a ‘playlist’ of their favourites, to be used as a starting point for reminiscence. We hope that �鶹Լ�� Music Memories will also be used in a family setting, perhaps with a grandparent and grandchild taking it in turns to find their own personally memorable music, and talking about the tracks and the memories that accompany them.

What happens next?

We are planning some research in to how Music Memories and Memory Radio are used by people with dementia, their families and carers, and will use any insights to improve and add to the service in 2020.

�鶹Լ�� Music Day

�鶹Լ�� Music Day is the annual celebration of the power of music to change lives with events and broadcasts across the week of 26 September. The theme this year is music and wellbeing. As part of this, music legend Nile Rodgers is the Ambassador for an unprecedented collaboration that brings together 85 organisations including Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer Scotland, Age UK, Playlist for Life and the NHS, to help bring music to everyone with dementia in the UK by 2020. The initiative has inspired over 800 events across the UK, from pop-up nightclubs and raves at care homes to intergenerational singing sessions, all celebrating the power of music to change lives.

Across the week of �鶹Լ�� Music Day, over 2,000 events in total will take place celebrating music and wellbeing, including pop up performances, interviews, musical takeovers and short films by artists including Craig David, Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi, Liam Gallagher, Anne-Marie, Guy Garvey, Professor Green, Ray BLK, Keane, Naughty Boy, Nina Nesbitt and more.

Taking �鶹Լ�� VR to new audiences - in libraries

2019-07-19T08:54:04+00:00

Over the last few months, the �鶹Լ�� – with huge support from librarians – has brought some of our favourite virtual reality experiences to new audiences in over 150 libraries.

Our research has shown us that viewers find virtual reality experiences uniquely memorable. Yet VR has still to find its place in the home entertainment market. Much like early TV and radio, for now, there’s no habit amongst our audiences for viewing VR at home.

VR is, however, already firmly establishing itself in the professional sector – offering corporate opportunities for training, change management and production amongst many other uses. Along with hardcore VR gaming, this market looks like it’s here to stay.

Location-based VR is the future – for now

The other area of growth in VR so far is in location-based experiences. In VR arcades, museums, art installations, people are more than happy to strap on a headset and immerse themselves in quality VR experiences, and to pay for the privilege. Examples include ‘The Antarctica Experience’ which began life at the Museum of Western Australia, and has moved to Australia’s National Museum for paying audiences, or something like ‘We Live in an Ocean of Air’ which had its run extended at the Saatchi Gallery twice.

But most location-based activity is in highly populated areas, rarely reaching smaller or more remote areas.

For the �鶹Լ��, location-based experiences need to sit comfortably with the �鶹Լ��’s public service goals. The VR Hub wanted to show our latest VR in locations with shared public values that cater to people the �鶹Լ�� might not otherwise reach. Locations spread across a huge geographical area with the space, staff and commitment to run multiple VR events. It was a tall ask.

UK public libraries score high on all these metrics. They’re an ideal low-cost opportunity for audiences to engage with �鶹Լ�� VR, and for the �鶹Լ�� to learn about its impact.

After a successful small trial, working with a group of �鶹Լ�� departments (�鶹Լ�� Rewind (NI), �鶹Լ�� Nations & Regions, �鶹Լ�� Marketing & Audiences) with the help of Libraries Connected, the �鶹Լ�� VR Hub set up a series of library VR pop-ups to run over three months across the widest selection of libraries we could manage.

We’ll be following this up by looking at the results of the online survey visitors to the libraries were asked to complete, which was designed by colleagues in �鶹Լ�� Marketing and Audiences, so that we can learn more about reactions to VR, how our audience interacts with it and whether there’s an appetite for VR - �鶹Լ�� VR in particular.

When we first set out on this journey, we were aiming to put pop-ups in around 20-30 libraries. But the tour rapidly grew as librarians pushed VR out to as many of their branches as they could, and now we’ve popped-up in more than 150 libraries so far.

It’s been amazing to see this growth, and even more amazing that it’s all happened organically. It started through contact with individual librarians facilitated by Libraries Connected. As it’s taken hold, more libraries have heard about it and come on board. Coupling high quality �鶹Լ�� VR with the library set-up has enabled the �鶹Լ�� to reach deep into communities all across the country, engaging new audiences in a huge spread of libraries to give them an extraordinary experience.

The model is simple. The �鶹Լ�� loans a handful of headsets to a library (a few have their own), licenses some content and supplies a pack of marketing materials, short training videos and the phone numbers for our team so we can troubleshoot on the hoof. The librarians run the pop-ups and when they’re done they send headsets on to the next location on the tour.

Season 1 began in April and featured Congo VR, season 2 was Doctor Who: The Runaway and we’re now showing 1943 Berlin Blitz for season 3. Once each season is done the headsets return to the start location and the next season begins.

The logistics have mostly worked smoothly but there have been a few challenges.

Organisationally it’s a mammoth task. (Lurking on VR Hub desktops is a migraine-inducing coloured grid tracking the headsets’ movements around the country)
The tech is new and new tech has plenty of glitches
Sometimes the route planning has gone a little awry or the turnaround has been very tight

Despite this, throughout, the can-do attitude and commitment of the network of library staff has made this project work. And it really has worked. The feedback has been incredible.

Participants are really enjoying �鶹Լ�� VR. So far, a staggering 96% of those who filled in the online survey found it enjoyable, 91% immersive and 93% original.

Our interim results show that people who visited our VR pop-ups in the libraries are three times more likely to recommend it to a friend or family member than any other out-of-home experience. 92% said they would talk about it with other people. The social media amplification has been huge. So far, the tour has featured in around 600 tweets, reaching nearly 800,000 users.

�鶹Լ�� content plus libraries is a winning combination

Great content in an unintimidating, safe, familiar environment with attentive helpers has been a huge draw. With the gentle, guiding hand of librarians, we’ve been able to encourage those who would not normally have tried VR to give it a go. For over half of our library VR users, this was their first chance to try VR.

We know that people don’t get how great VR can be until they try it. Persuading audiences to take that first step and put on a headset has been the big challenge for VR makers. Library VR experiences may be helping to break down this barrier. Even those who are otherwise hard to reach, have engaged with VR.

And librarians are getting a lot out of the tour too. Some of these services have been hard pressed in recent years – and this has given them the chance to reaffirm and strengthen their community role around high-quality content. It’s also been a highly visible way for libraries to demonstrate their developing digital skills and expertise.

VR is acting as a springboard for learning. After seeing Congo VR 83% of viewers wanted to learn more about the subject.

And people want more. 85% of people said they would go to more �鶹Լ�� VR events. Those who visited �鶹Լ�� VR library pop-up events were three times more likely to try VR again compared with those who’ve tried other out-of-home VR experiences.

The �鶹Լ�� has a history of democratising new technology, opening up opportunities for many. The �鶹Լ�� Micro played a key role in the home computer boom in the early 80s. Few other organisations have the potential to offer such a wide scale of opportunities for people to experience new forms of media. And radical new media like virtual reality needs that kind of boost.

It’s not over yet

There are two more weeks of the pilot to go and libraries are still joining the scheme. Across the country there’s a tangible wave of energy, excitement and expectation. We’ve offered three seasons and librarians are asking what’s season 4? There’s a real opportunity to build from this fabulously successful, organic project and reach many communities, particularly those for whom new technology or immersive installations are hard to access.

�鶹Լ�� Music Memories

2018-09-27T23:05:10+00:00

“The power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication." Oliver Sacks, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University

Today, on �鶹Լ�� Music Day 2018, we are launching �鶹Լ�� Music Memories, a website designed to use music to help people with dementia reconnect with their most powerful memories. We are also launching a survey - integrated into the website - which aims to help discover the nation’s favourite music memories. The survey data will help researchers suggest tunes that could bring back memories for people who have developed dementia or other brain conditions.

�鶹Լ�� Music Memories is incredibly simple to use on PC, tablet or smartphone. It has a simple user guide along with helpful links to further dementia support resources. We worked with experts from music and dementia charities, including Playlist For Life, on the design and shape of the service.

Music and Memory

Evidence shows that music can help people with dementia to feel and live better, and we wanted to build on the success of the award-winning �鶹Լ�� Reminiscence Archive, using content from the �鶹Լ��’s archives, to help improve the lives of people with dementia.

The thinking behind �鶹Լ�� Music Memories is quite simple, and is based on the principle of the ‘reminiscence bump’ - people tend to recall more from their adolescence and early adulthood - and the phenomenon that ‘whilst verbal communication and associated thought processes deteriorate in dementia, the brain structures involved in the processing of musical information often remain intact’.

Musical Reminiscence

Reminiscence work - the recalling and sharing of life events - is increasing being used to help people with dementia have meaningful conversations with family and carers, and increase their wellbeing and quality of life. Such conversations can be beneficial for both the person with dementia and the families and carers around them.

�鶹Լ�� Music Memories helps people with dementia to find personally meaningful music - perhaps the tracks they listened to as a teenager or in early adulthood - and create a ‘playlist’ of their favourites, to be used as a starting point for reminiscence. We hope that �鶹Լ�� Music Memories will be also be used in a family setting, perhaps with grandparent and grandchild taking it in turns to find their own personally memorable music, and talking about the tracks and the memories that accompany them.

The Music

Working with the �鶹Լ�� Music Library, we researched the most popular music from the last 100 years, and produced a list of around 120 tracks for each decade from 1920 up to the present day. Many of the earlier tracks, despite being hugely popular at the time, were pretty difficult to find, but the Music Library team did a fantastic job of tracking them down and digitising them. The �鶹Լ�� Photo Library also managed to find many unique images of the performers from the archives, and we have added these evocative images to the website.

We also selected the 23 most popular classical composers, and for each composer, selected their 20 most played pieces. And finally, we selected the theme tunes from 100 �鶹Լ�� TV and Radio shows.

In total, these add up to around 1800 clips of music that can be listened to for free, and added to a playlist. The playlist can also be printed off, and has a box where people can note down their memories related to each track.

Give it a try and share your playlist with the nation

Why not give it a try? To begin, select whether you want to browse through classical, popular music or theme tunes. Then, choose a composer or decade. When in the ‘popular’ category, within each decade you can also filter by musical genre. Add some favourites, and then share your favourites via our anonymous survey, helping researchers in to music and dementia help others to create their own playlists of personally memorable music.

�鶹Լ�� Music Memories is launching on September 28th as part of �鶹Լ�� Music Day - an annual celebration of the power of music to change lives. We hope that �鶹Լ�� Music Memories, in some small way, will do exactly that.

Taking to the skies - in VR

2018-08-13T12:50:16+00:00

As summer temperatures soared to record-breaking highs, the �鶹Լ�� VR Hub staged an ambitious event to launch a new interactive VR experience on four HTC Vive headsets in a small tent in a field at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford.

Created by �鶹Լ�� Northern Ireland's Rewind team and VR production company, Immersive VR Education, 1943: Berlin Blitz is based on actual �鶹Լ�� sound archive recorded during WW2 on a Lancaster bomber raid over Berlin. Viewers share the cockpit with the brave crew and courageous team of war reporter, Wynford Vaughan-Thomas and sound recordist, Reg Pidsley as they document their flight on a terrifying mission over Berlin. The sense of danger is real, and justified - just four months after this flight, their plane, F for Freddie, was shot down over Stettin.

Less than a year into the �鶹Լ��ǯs new VR venture, the �鶹Լ�� VR Hub has so far produced four ground-breaking projects. Both 1943: Berlin Blitz and Make Noise – a voice-activated experience celebrating the suffragette movement – will officially premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Damming the Nile, which takes viewers on assignment with �鶹Լ�� News Africa correspondent, Alastair Leithead, to investigate the impact of a huge new dam, has been nominated for a Rose d'Or and last week the �鶹Լ�� announced its first Virtual Reality Prom: Nothing to be Written.

�鶹Լ�� VR Hub's intended audience for these experiences extends beyond the VR community. In order to fully explore the appetite for VR, the Hub is aiming to get high quality pieces out to audiences who might not otherwise have encountered virtual reality - like the 185,000 families, veterans and teenage groups who converged on RAF Fairford for the Air Tattoo in July.

With a skeletal crew, the usual tech gremlins and a thunderstorm it seemed unlikely that our ambitious set-up – screening across four headsets simultaneously in a small tent in the middle of a field – would stand the test.

Mostly, it did.

In four seats ripped out of a 747, inside a vintage RAF tent accompanied by rumbling vibrations of F16s and other aircraft streaking overhead, over 500 people watched 1943: Berlin Blitz during the three day event. With the help of Chris Long, from Immersive VR Education and Warren Bell from �鶹Լ�� Rewind, the �鶹Լ�� VR Hub team put a constant flow of visitors through the 14 minute VR experience.

The response was incredible. Despite challenges due to the heat and location,Men, women, teenagers, veterans and civilians all went up in F For Freddie,and their feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

Some came back two or three times, despite queues of up to 45 minutes. There were tears, congratulations and plenty of awe. Many had never experienced any VR before.

Comments included: "...if there was one thing worth coming to the show for today it was this!"

"We want more of this from the �鶹Լ��"

"We saw it on �鶹Լ�� Points West so we got up this morning, walked 5 miles over the fields from our house and came straight here" (0730 Sunday)

"Wow"

"Best thing here"

"Best thing I’ve ever seen""

So convinced by the 'real' computer graphics, one older man asked: 'Did you make the film in 1943?'

Such a project would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. VR kit and expertise is growing rapidly. Whether the audience will match that growth is still a big unknown.

Over the next few months, the �鶹Լ�� VR Hub will be running a series of VR Pop-Ups in libraries to bring quality VR to a wider audience so they can decide if it's something they'd like to see more of. The �鶹Լ�� VR Hub will also continue to work closely with the �鶹Լ�� Blue Room to show VR at various events throughout the summer and autumn. As a result of the Air Tattoo multiple museums have expressed interest in showing 1943: Berlin Blitz. They see it as a valuable tool to introduce new, younger audiences to history.

That comes with its own challenges. Most VR headset makers recommend children under 13 should not use VR. Even those over 13 are unlikely to have access to a headset or to easily find good content. And, as the team at the Hub knows, it's got to be very good content to convince viewers to put on what are still quite clunky headsets, tolerate occasional technical glitches - common to new kit - and surrender to up to 15 minutes in the virtual world.

The 360 (non interactive) version of 1943: Berlin Blitz was shown by the �鶹Լ�� Blue Room earlier this month at the Turing Festival – again to great acclaim. Despite a lack of a VR-viewing habit among the audience and associated kit and quality issues, the team at the �鶹Լ�� VR Hub is cautiously optimistic that these projects might be indicating the audience wants good, and appropriate VR. There are a clutch of similarly ambitious, exciting projects in production. As these are released, over the next year or so, the �鶹Լ�� VR Hub – and the �鶹Լ�� as a whole - will have a much better understanding of what the virtual future might look like.

Other �鶹Լ�� VR Hub projects have included AR prototypes with �鶹Լ�� News Labs and support for in-house 360 and VR ventures including Crossing the Sky, �鶹Լ�� News’ Is Anna Okay? and Bloodhound, a 360 ride in the world’s fastest land vehicle.

To see much of this content for yourself, visit /virtualreality or download the �鶹Լ�� VR App: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/gear-vr/1834522029951979.

Building the Computer Literacy Project archive

2018-06-27T08:00:00+00:00

The �鶹Լ�� Computer Literacy Project ran throughout the eighties, giving us the brilliant �鶹Լ�� Micro and inspiring a generation of programmers - including me. When the first programme of the project, Managing the Micro was transmitted in March 1980 I'd already spent many weekends coding on an Apple II Europlus borrowed from my dad's work and then enjoyed an entire summer holiday (during which I didn't see much sun) with a Commodore Pet 4016 kindly loaned from school by my maths teacher. I was already hooked - and incredibly excited that the �鶹Լ�� would make actual TV programmes about my personal obsession.

When word of the �鶹Լ�� Micro's advanced specification and sophisticated version of Basic reached my circle of computing friends we knew this was the machine to have. I'd used its predecessor, the Acorn Atom, and come to love features such as the ability to write 6502 assembly language inline in Basic programs. My much-pestered parents bought me a Beeb Model A for Christmas 1982. Within a couple of months I was spending most of my weekends at the shop where they'd bought it - HCCS in Gateshead - by then a meeting place for like minded folk. Pretty soon I was serving customers and using my pay to upgrade my Model A bit by bit to Model B specification.

The �鶹Լ�� Micro was my first proper computer and the lessons I learnt programming it, understanding its design, expanding and, eventually, modifying it have been the foundation of a life spent joyfully working and playing with computers.

Nigel and me hanging out at HCCS

So when, in April 2016, Jake Berger asked if Sam Urquhart and I would be interested in developing a web-based archive of the Computer Literacy Project programmes we were thrilled and honoured.

The archive owes its existence to two veterans of the Computer Literacy Project: Series Producer David Allen and Programme Engineer Steve Lowry. When Sam and I were introduced to them Steve had already made an epic Excel spreadsheet containing all 146 programmes of the original project and scores of related programmes, all broken down into annotated, categorised clips.

Steve also found and rescued hundreds of discs containing the �鶹Լ�� Micro software that was used for on-screen demos (quite a lot of which he'd written in the first place) and obtained digital copies of all the programmes from the original series. He combined all these elements with a custom search interface (written in Visual Basic) that allowed clips to be searched for and played and relevant �鶹Լ�� Micro programmes to be run in an emulator. It's easily the most impressive spreadsheet based application I've ever seen and it presented us with quite a challenge to do it justice with the web site.

Steve's curation of this content was ongoing so his spreadsheet would need to continue to be the authoritative version of the project. Clearly we'd need to be able to re-import the spreadsheet every time additions and changes were made. That gave us an obvious starting point; I wrote an importer that would parse the spreadsheet and populate a MariaDB database with entities representing brands, series, programmes, clips etc. The importer would also use ffmpeg to encode any new media items for HLS streaming and extract a poster frame for each clip in every programme.

I made a rough and ready first draft of the web interface so we could start to get a sense of the shape of the archive and figure out how best to present it. I confess, I was quite happy with that first version of the site. That's when Sam Urquhart got involved in the project. She hadn't seen the original programmes and knew little of the project's history. This allowed her to represent all those people who, like her, would need a gentler introduction to the archive. Frankly, she said my site was awful, opaque and unfriendly. She got to work redesigning it.

I had already seen Matt Godbolt's amazing browser based �鶹Լ�� Micro emulator, jsbeeb, and hoped to use it to make the software that Steve had recovered from all those floppy disks run in the browser. While Sam worked on the front end I integrated jsbeeb. I even got to write some �鶹Լ�� Basic - jsbeeb is launched with a small bootstrap program to display the instructions. I was pleased and surprised in 2017 to be building a web service that generated a program written in a language I hadn't worked with in 30 odd years.

Sam and I had previously worked together to build �鶹Լ�� Genome and we used some of the same Open Source technology for this site. The back end is written in Perl using the Dancer framework with Template::Toolkit. The database is MariaDB and the full text search is provided by Sphinx. The interface is built on Bootstrap 3 and the video / audio player is VideoJS. The site is hosted on servers running Ubuntu.

Throughout the development of the archive we have been impressed that so many of the concerns raised then (coding for everyone, women in technology, privacy, artificial intelligence, loss of jobs to technology) have proved to be prescient. As technology continues to transform society these issues are now, more than ever, at the forefront of our relationship with machines.

In common with many programmers of my generation I owe the �鶹Լ�� a huge debt of gratitude for taking such a bold initiative - the benefits of which are still with us today. It was a great privilege for us to work on this archive. We hope you enjoy it.

You can access the Computer Literacy Project archive at https://computer-literacy-project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/

Archiving the �鶹Լ��’s website and social media output

2017-07-18T15:32:00+00:00

�鶹Լ�� Archives has a remit to archive output with historical, cultural and production re-use value. Carl Davies is part of the Digital Archives Services team, and gives an insight into how such a broad range of online content is captured and saved in the archive.

In 2014 I posted a blog, and my colleague Elliot Gibson also wrote an article, detailing how �鶹Լ�� Archives were archiving and preserving the �鶹Լ��’s web and social media output. With the vast changes to the website, innovations and new ways of the �鶹Լ�� interacting with audiences we felt it was a good time for an update.

Web Archiving

The �鶹Լ�� tries to maintain and keep older pages online for the public to access for as a long as possible (dependant on technology, editorial or copyright reasons). It’s the �鶹Լ�� Archives responsibility to archive copies offline and preserve them. We archived the whole website in 2014, and as most of these pages are static, we don’t need to archive them all again, so we now have a targeted and selective approach each year focused on newly created pages.

In terms of capturing pages from bbc.co.uk for our web archive collections we currently have a 3 point approach:

WARC Web Crawling: This form of web archiving downloads and preserves the pages in the international standard of “WARC”. These WARC files can then be brought back to life on software, allowing users and researchers to view and interact with the website as if it were ‘live’ (clicking links and browsing). Web crawling captures a point in time, and currently we aim to do a high quality crawl of selected parts of the �鶹Լ�� website once a year.
PDF Web Crawling: In addition to the WARC files, we ensure each page captured also has a PDF, thus we are not solely bound by the WARC technology. That way we can also share PDFs for internal research. As it's a universal method of viewing documents, preservation is more straightforward in the future.
Screencasting: Lastly we look to take a screencast of some of our websites, especially when they have been redesigned, to capture the look & feel of the site in a video (a bit like a software tutorial or a computer game walkthrough you often find on YouTube). This consists of someone recording their screen while browsing a part of the �鶹Լ�� Website, and this walkthrough is then archived alongside our other AV archive collections. Essentially it's an historical record of how the site behaved.

AV, Audio & Images published online

In terms of content published on both the �鶹Լ�� website and the social media platforms, we select almost all unique video and audio. For example, �鶹Լ��3, Radio 1, and iPlayer Exclusives. We archive AV, audio and images to a high standard so all this content can be associated with all our other Television and Radio archive collections and re-used within the �鶹Լ��. We also archive new innovations like 360 degree video, and Surround Sound online audio. And finally we archive thousands of images published online.

Social Media Archiving

We aim to archive unique content published on social media platforms. We also archive a selection of the �鶹Լ��’s Twitter accounts - the actual ‘Tweets’ - as a record of how the �鶹Լ�� communicates with the demographic who use Twitter as a social media tool. Many of these accounts complement the traditional TV & Radio output holdings, but also tell the story of the �鶹Լ��’s corporate communications. Other institutions and organisations, such as The National Archives have begun archiving Twitter output as a way of archiving cultural memory and current communication methods. Only Tweets (including retweets and replies) from selected official �鶹Լ�� Twitter accounts are captured. Tweets from non-�鶹Լ�� accounts aren’t captured nor are any tweets from the general public. Alongside the �鶹Լ�� generated Tweets any images tweeted by the �鶹Լ�� are also captured. We also archive many of the videos that appear on Facebook & YouTube.

Our Web & Social media archives are maintained and preserved to the very best industry standards. Much of the content is still live online. If unique material is taken down from public view for editorial or copyright reasons, we still ensure we have captured and archived this material for internal re-use or research purposes.

Developing digital experiences to help dementia sufferers

2015-11-19T11:10:16+00:00

Connected Studio have investigated the use of �鶹Լ�� Archive material to improve the well-being and memory of people with dementia. A workshop was hosted to discuss this possibility and provide essential insights into living with the condition. Events Producer Laura Harrison discusses the techniques used in the workshop and the importance of this new project.

Can the use of the �鶹Լ�� Archive help stimulate memory in dementia sufferers? Recently, �鶹Լ�� Connected Studio ran a workshop to discuss just that; enabling �鶹Լ�� experts in Archive, Engineering and Learning to connect with the UK’s leading experts in dementia.

With the data available to understand our audience habits by demographic(s) and the technical capability from �鶹Լ�� Research & Development (for example, object based media), the �鶹Լ�� is potentially in a strong position to offer help in creating new digital experiences that stimulate memory and encourage well-being.

Dementia sufferers are often misunderstood. The stigma attached to the disease leaves them in isolation more times than not. The most common misconception is that dementia (the umbrella term for any brain syndrome that results in cognitive deficiency, including Alzheimer’s) is caused by old age, when in fact it is caused by brain disease. It affects more than just the memory, it can create change in personality too.

With the millions of video, audio, images and articles that the �鶹Լ�� archive holds, could these assets help dementia sufferers with reminiscence therapy and help create a place of wellbeing to live with dementia? And if so, what might that look like?

The workshop began with an overview of the �鶹Լ�� archive from Peter Rippon, showing examples of the plethora of material available from as early as the 1890’s, predating the �鶹Լ��. This was followed by an overview of dementia from Prof Alistair Burns, informing us of the stark reality that it is the most feared disease in over 50’s in the UK - more so than cancer and heart disease - most likely because of the lack of information available to the public and ultimately down to the cost of research.

During the workshop, the participants were split into 5 groups with a mix of skills and asked to create several ideas before focusing on one. The teams used personas to help inform their ideas. These personas were created by the University of the West of Scotland in connection with Alzheimer’s Scotland and provided some background knowledge into the life of five specific dementia sufferers. Although these personas were based on real lives and portrayed some representation of dementia, the span of the disease means that each case is entirely different.

We were also lucky enough to be working with the Scottish Dementia Working Group who connected us with Henry and Robina, both of whom have dementia and offered user testing around the concepts. It was an emotional session listening to the experience of living with the disease and they highlighted some useful points that the teams had overlooked.

For example, generally speaking, people with dementia suffer from a short attention span, therefore elongated periods of archive video wouldn’t necessarily be an appropriate solution in some cases. After presenting the user journeys to Henry & Robina, the teams continued to work up their ideas using this feedback before showcasing them to the wider group.

There were some great digital concepts presented, which varied from personalised experiences using mood and time, to collaborative online experiences with a specific focus on singing. The ideas are still being reviewed, after which a selection may be asked to build prototypes which can be tested with dementia sufferers.

I think it's safe to say that this particular challenge was a favourite amongst the team. Seeing groups that are usually so far removed from each others' daily work life, coming together and using the Connected Studio techniques and innovation process to try to find a way to actually help people suffering from dementia, left us feeling humbled and proud to be able to contribute.

Labelling �鶹Լ�� Online's archived websites

2014-11-06T13:48:58+00:00

Find out more about the work of the �鶹Լ��'s technology division.

A banner at the top of a page on the �鶹Լ�� website showing it has been archived.

As I write, a team from �鶹Լ�� Future Media is in the middle of a project to move millions of pages of �鶹Լ�� Online archive content to a new home. The operation will allow us to switch off an obsolete layer of technology and secure access to the archive for years to come.

The �鶹Լ�� treats its online archive with care. We are committed to maintaining users’ access to a vast amount of �鶹Լ�� content stretching back over years of �鶹Լ�� Online’s output, from text articles to message boards, audio and video and more.

However, maintaining access to that archive is different to maintaining the content itself, which means that much of the archive is, in effect, frozen in time: we do not update the content any more.

In those cases, we’ve put a clear label on the page warning this is the case, and users should be aware that the information provided on these pages may be out of date or otherwise inaccurate due to the passage of time.

The date you see in the banner on one of those pages is calculated automatically, using the last published date our systems hold. On some occasions, that date will not reflect when the actual content changed - for instance, where all or part of the page has content updated by automated systems which might still be running (or continued running after the final publication date).

Why don’t we update some types of content any more?

There are a number of potential reasons:

The programme or series to which the content relates might have ended.
The events to which it relates have come to a close or are now less noteworthy.
The content or sites are not regarded as core to �鶹Լ�� Online’s proposition.

These pages are not deleted because, often, they still have value - either as a piece of content that's of continuing use or because the information they contain might be of historical interest later. It also may be the case that users have bookmarked or shared those pages, and we don't want to break those links.

For technical or other reasons, it may also be that some pages are incomplete or some kinds of content no longer function. Again, to maintain as much of the archive as possible, we have chosen to leave these partially complete pages online.

Normally, we don’t delete content unless it presents a risk of causing harm or damage today. There are strict guidelines around the alteration or removal of content from �鶹Լ�� Online.

In general, once a piece of content is published on �鶹Լ�� Online, it should stay there, and we're committed to making sure it remains available for generations to come.

If you have any queries or complaints about a part of the �鶹Լ�� Archive, you can find contact information on the �鶹Լ��'s complaints website.

Round up: Continuous delivery, Genome and The Doctor

2014-10-24T05:29:11+00:00

Chris Northwood on his personal blog, gave some insights into “How we applied Continuous Delivery for iWonder Timelines”:

"One thing we didn’t want to do is continuously deliver low quality code… so we took a step back and came up with a few ideas of what that means in a Continuous Delivery world. One key practice was to tackle bugs as soon as we find them. With monthly release cycles, you could leave them until later, but with a continuous flow, there’s no “later” to leave them to. We want to get a single feature through our pipeline quickly, rather than batching up multiple features or improvements into bigger, monthly, releases."

The �鶹Լ��’s Genome project went live last week. As well as Andy Armstrong’s post you can read this overview from Hilary Bishop on the About the �鶹Լ�� blog.

The Guardian’s angle on Genome was “What was on TV on the day you were born?”

Andy Mabbut via Twitter:

A tweet about Genome from Andy Mabbett

Here's the link to the Wikidata page.

The �鶹Լ�� Research and Development blog featured some work on binaural effects: “Tommies in 3D”:

"...it aims to recreate the complex effect that the human body has on a sound reaching the auditory system to create a more realistic spatial impression for the listener. This effect can be created in recordings with dummy head microphone techniques and also in post-production using digital signal processing, which is the approach we have taken here."

The R&D team have also been running experiments with surround sound on Radio 4’s production last weekend of Under Milk Wood:

“The new headphone surround sound feature is possible thanks to a web technology called the Web Audio API. This client-side script API introduces capabilities for audio signal processing in web applications. It has a range of applications, such as music creation and games, or even recreating the sounds of the Radiophonic Workshop. �鶹Լ�� R&D's Matthew Paradis is co-chairing with the W3C's Audio Working Group, which is working on the specification.”

Doctor and the Dalek poster

If you want to know more about “The Doctor and the Dalek” C�鶹Լ�� game after Paul Bennun's post, you can read a Q&A with Ralph Rivera and Danny Cohen on the About the �鶹Լ�� blog.

There's also a story on the �鶹Լ�� News website and an interview on YouTube with games producer Richard Jenkins and John Howard of Make It Digital.

The Register gave the game a good review, sensibly testing it on a ten year old:

He had no problem driving it, saying “It was surprisingly good, despite my dad’s warnings about the �鶹Լ�� – though it did crash twice... Since it was aimed at people below the Scratch mark I thought they would do more programming,” continued Alexander, “though you could skip all the blowing up stuff to just the programming and it had basic variables in it. It would be better at the end if you could copy the programs you made so that you learnt that you could use it like a proper programming language.”

Nick Reynolds is Assistant Editor, �鶹Լ�� Online

Genome: behind the scenes

2014-10-15T21:05:09+00:00

In October 2011 Helen Papadopoulos wrote about the Genome project - a mammoth effort to digitise an issue of the Radio Times from every week between 1923 and 2009 and make searchable programme listings available online.

Helen expected there to be between 3 and 3.5 million programme entries. Since then the number has grown to 4,423,653 programmes from 4,469 issues. You can now browse and search all of them at http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/

Back in 2011 the process of digitising the scanned magazines was well advanced and our thoughts were turning to how to present the archive online. It's taken three years and a few prototypes to get us to our first public release.

The first edition of the Radio Times

Jake Berger and Hilary Bishop have written on the About the �鶹Լ�� blog about the Genesis of Genome but I know some of you share our fascination with the technicalities of projects such as this, so I'm going to give you some of the gritty behind-the-scenes details.

The web site is hosted on Linux servers. We have database servers running MySQL and Sphinx Search and application servers which run Apache and a web application written in Perl using Dancer and Template Toolkit. In front of the application servers a layer of Varnish application cache servers helps to handle the load.

Along the way we've used a lot of other Open Source software to index, catalogue and transform data, scale images and automate development processes. As is often the case with projects underaken at the �鶹Լ�� we couldn't have done it without the work of countless Open Source developers and, as ever, we are extremely grateful to them for making our work possible.

The web application was designed from the outset to allow speedy browsing and searching of over four million records so we always had an eye on performance when making technical choices. Even so the sheer size of the data was more of a problem than we expected. Until we switched our development servers to using solid state disks (SSD) it took over a week just to load the database into MySQL. Even after the switch to SSDs a complete database load would take more than twenty-four hours. We quickly learnt that "we'll just load up another copy of the database for testing" was not an option.

Once the data is loaded it's mostly unchanging, which helps a little with caching. However the data set is so large that we can't realistically cache all of it. You may notice that some pages of listings take longer to load than others. If that's the case (and assuming it's not too frustrating for you) you can congratulate yourself for finding a bit of the archive that nobody else has looked at recently - if they had it would be 'hot' in the cache and served to you quickly.

One of the most common ways to use the archive will be the search box; we expect a lot of searching and, naturally, the search queries are unpredictable (although we guess that lot of people are going to search for "Doctor Who"). The unpredictability of the search terms means that we can't cache search results at all. We've done quite a bit of performance testing, but one of the reasons for the "Beta" badge that the site is currently wearing is that we couldn't really tell how well it would perform until it went live.

Radio Times covers through the years

As I said the data is mostly unchanging. However we know the data contains errors and we're asking for your help to find and fix them. It's possible to submit changes to any programme listing and add any additional comments you may have in the "Tell Us More" box.

When an edit is submitted it shows up in our admin interface within 10 seconds. From there, if approved, it is applied to the live site. In an extreme case it could be only 30 seconds between submitting an edit and having it accepted and visible. Normally though, the editors who process the incoming changes will batch them up, maybe working through the queue a couple of times a day (they have other things to do too).

There's a synchronisation protocol that is responsible for collecting incoming user edits from the front-end web servers and relaying them back to the admin system. When changes have been approved the admin system sends them back to the front-end servers, each of which updates its own copy of the data. To preserve the integrity of the data each change is logged in the database and can, if necessary, be undone.

One of the things we hope to be able to do in future releases is to make it possible to edit more than just the programme text. We know, for example, that some programmes are currently showing up on the wrong days due to OCR errors on the dates.

We also have work to do to make the site even more accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies. And smartphone users may notice certain, er, challenges with the current version of the site (it's better in landscape than in portrait). Sorry. It's on the list. We're working on it.

It may seem odd, but until this data was digitised, the �鶹Լ�� had no comprehensive record of day-to-day broadcast history in a searchable machine readable form. One of the most exciting things about the data is the possibility of linking it to other archives that the �鶹Լ�� and other organisations have. It would, for example, be fascinating to see the covers of contemporaneous newspapers alongside the programme listings, or trade links with related Wikipedia articles.

In addition to helping us by editing erroneous programme pages and, of course, testing the site in its Beta form, we would also love to hear from anyone with interesting ideas for matching and combining this data with other databases and resources. Some of us have been staring at this data for years; you're bound to be able to think of something exciting to do with it that we've lost sight of.

And if you find bugs please accept our apologies and let us know about them too.

I must mention some of the people without whom this web version of the �鶹Լ��'s broadcast history would not have been possible: Nick Clement and Richard Sullivan created the visual design, Sam Urquhart built the web front end, Mo McRoberts built the first prototype of the web site and all of the infrastructure that the site now runs on. Ian Pouncey gave us invaluable insight and practical advice on accessibility. Any remaining shortcomings are there because we haven't yet had time to implement all his recommendations.

We all hope you enjoy using Genome to explore the �鶹Լ��'s history.

Andy Armstrong is Internet Engineer, Archive Development

�鶹Լ�� Online@20: Updating the �鶹Լ�� Web Archive

2014-05-19T11:22:11+00:00

The �鶹Լ�� Web Archive has been growing at an increasing rate in the last couple of years. Having one of the biggest websites in the world, dating back to 1994, it's been a huge task to pull together so much material. How does our web archive collection breakdown? Here goes...

Since the mid-nineties copies of various �鶹Լ�� websites were deposited with the Archives, often on disc including the website code, which came in at an ad-hoc rate. This included the very first �鶹Լ�� website known as the �鶹Լ�� Networking Club. By 2004 it was clear that a new web archive solution was needed, and the Archive joined forces with our technology partners and created an in-house web archive system – The �鶹Լ�� Web Archive 1.0. It took copies of large parts of the �鶹Լ�� website and any new or amended page. This created millions of pages within the first web archive. From 2008 the �鶹Լ�� moved to dynamic web hosting, with lots more interactive content, so this older automatic archive system couldn't cope as well, and it was effectively closed in 2010.

This meant looking for a new solution, which was very pressing given that �鶹Լ�� Online was rationalised in 2011 after a review, and had a major facelift. This resulted in hundreds of websites closing or moving. We archived all the code for these website closures and redesigns, and also introduced screencasting into our archive capture, in order to emulate the user journey within many of our major websites. We have also selected for the archive nearly all the exclusive video, audio, podcasts and games, because these have intrinsic value beyond the website itself. So if there are web exclusive films from Live Lounge for example, we have archived them therefore one day a programme maker can re-use these in television documentaries.

The �鶹Լ��'s 1997 election website

The next step was to introduce a more robust web archive process in-line with what The British Library and The National Archives currently undertake with our national and government web resources. That led us to adopt a more focused web crawling solution. To back fill our archives with older crawls, we linked up with the Internet Archive, and took a copy of 16,000 web crawls they had dating from 1996 to 2014 – these thousands of crawls constituted over 160 million archived web pages of �鶹Լ�� Online. In addition we have been working with the Web Archive specialists ‘Hanzo’ on a proof of concept web crawl of bbc.co.uk. This is the most extensive and high quality crawl of our website ever, and is approximately 10 million pages in size.

The next steps will be to convert our �鶹Լ�� Web Archive 1.0 and any older archived sites into the WARC international web archive standard, so they can sit with the Internet Archive extracted crawls we have obtained (160 million pages) and the current high quality proof of concept crawl (10 million pages). Once these collections are together, we will look towards storing these on a server, indexing the WARC crawls and backing them up to LTO data tap. Finally we will place a search interface on top of our web archive collections, much like the Wayback Machine open source software. This will initially be for research and internal re-use, but also help us manage and preserve our website history. We are also archiving the �鶹Լ��’s eBooks and iWonder guides, which are new innovative ways of hosting �鶹Լ�� content online. And we have a rich document archive of the �鶹Լ��’s online innovations, particularly around iPlayer.

So there is a fair amount of work to do, but we now have a vast and rich Web Archive, with over 200 million archived pages from 20 years of �鶹Լ�� Online - dating from the 1994 �鶹Լ�� Networking Club through to the current day.

Carl Davies is an Archive Innovation Executive, �鶹Լ�� Information and Archives

News Archive Connected Studio: Build Studio

2014-03-10T08:35:09+00:00

The plans for the �鶹Լ��’s News Archive are moving apace now following a really creative two day Build Studio event in Belfast last week. Eight Indy teams who successfully wowed us at the Connected Studio event in January came to build prototypes and hone their ideas. We were housed in the Titanic Centre in Belfast, for long hours sat on chairs rumoured to have been made for the ship itself. We managed to achieve a lot more than just re-arrange them!

The ideas broadly crystallised around three, sometimes overlapping, themes. Using archive to enhance and enrich audience understanding of News happening now; exploiting local and location based experiences; and making experiences more social and personal.

Teams at work at the News Archive Build studio

Audiences consistently tell us they want News stories with more context and depth. News can sometimes feel like a moving car. It can be quite hard catching up or getting into a News story when you arrive in the middle of it happening. However, audiences do not like feeling they are being told what they need to know, they want to control and discover for themselves. Can the archive help meet these needs with a story like Ukraine and Crimea for example? We have been covering the story since before Stalin’s purges. Loftus Media & Softwire, Big Motive, VBOT and Think all explored ideas around this theme.

The extraordinary growth in mobile use, 50% year on year grow this month for the �鶹Լ��, means storytelling informed by where you are is becoming increasingly interesting. Journalists from TV, Radio and Newspapers have traditionally not really given much thought to where the person consuming your story is, beyond very broad geography. Archive and location are also obvious partners. If you care about News local to you, you are likely to care about events in the past that are local too. Aerian Studios and Planning Unit teams both looked at the kind of experiences that could be created.

Finally archive also has really potency to drive nostalgia and connect with audiences emotionally. Social networks, and the instinct that drives people to share content, is often driven by a similar emotional power. So how can we exploit that apparently similar sensibility? Clearleft, and the team from Nixon McInnes & �鶹Լ�� R&D looked at this.

Overall the teams delivered a range of strong, distinct ideas at the end of an intense couple of days. The next step is to test these simple proofs of concepts with audience panels, and use this research to help us decide which to develop further as fully-featured pilots or live trials.

Peter Rippon is Editor, �鶹Լ�� Online Archive

News Archive Connected Studio: using yesterday to tell better stories tomorrow

2014-01-29T08:35:10+00:00

A host of rich ideas have emerged from last week’s Connected Studio exploring ways to unlock the �鶹Լ�� News Archive. I had a great time because mixing the ambitious, anarchic, artistic chaos of creative endeavour with a tight deadline always produces interesting results.

Photo courtesy of Head agency who attended the Connected Studio event

Several themes emerged across the day. Firstly there was real excitement about the potential of archive to give our audiences really potent and immersive experiences. We can use the past to connect with audiences on a much deeper emotional level. The �鶹Լ�� Archive is unique and extraordinary in its depth. So it can be a big part of what the �鶹Լ�� feels like to audiences and what makes it distinctive in the fully digital world.

There was also agreement that we cannot just digitise the archive and hope people find it. We have to curate it and connect it to the things people are interested in now. This throws up fascinating cultural and technical challenges which were wrestled with during the Connected Studio event.

Culturally the �鶹Լ�� has for decades been very prescriptive in what we give our audiences. We decide the schedules, we choose what is important and what facts should or should not be included, but digital audiences want to control their own journeys and instinctively resist being told what to do.

So can we reconcile the two?

Lots of ideas explored ways in which we can. Audiences get to control their own serendipitous journeys into our content within a context curated by �鶹Լ�� Journalists, so experiences remain relevant and rich with public service value.

Delegates at the London site

The technical challenges are becoming clearer too. The linked data platform allows us to connect things happening now to relevant events in the past but how can we find the sweet spot between machine and human curation? Lots of ideas also rightly explored the potential to offer more personalised experiences with the News Archive, especially using location technology. This has huge potential given the emotional power of archive to connect people with where they are from, as well as where they are now.

There will now be a judging process and a build studio in Belfast (on the 26th and 27th February) from which prototypes will follow.

So thank you again to all the teams that took part. It was really valuable and fun.

Peter Rippon is Editor, �鶹Լ�� Online Archive

Peter Rippon addresses delegates in London