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?