Digitising Moral Panic - Video in the Classroom
Carol Green, from Craven College Skipton, was one of the first lecturers to use the NewsFilm Online resource in a classroom setting, selecting a suite of films from the archive that explore the idea of moral panic.
In particular, she wanted to show her class of Journalism students that the idea of moral panic is not a contemporary one. Clips from the NewsFilm Online archive were central to her argument that moral panics are not only a contemporary concern, but had an imapact in the 1950s.
A news-clip reporting on violence between Mods and Rockers was a key part of her work.
You can see a video of Ms Green explaining her usage of the resource from the JISC website.
Yesterdays’s Headlines …. Televised News Online
NewsFilm Online, launched last week, contains 60,000 digitised clips from the archives of ITN and other news sources.
It’s an incredibly rich resource, featuring news stories relating to events such as the Suez crisis in 1956, Nelson Mandela’s first interview in 1961, the moon landing in 1969 and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.
For the moment, it’s fun just exploring some of the content that is there.
But it will be interesting to see how the resources get used in the educational community.
Video has not had a great take up in teaching and learning - is this because of the content, or because of the medium? How NewsFilm Online is used will give us much more evidence in this area.
(Note the videos can only be accessed by those in UK university and college sector.)
Will a BBC video archive swamp everything else?
Various events earlier in the summer gave the BBC the chance to parade their plans to digitise their entire back archive of televisual material. (Although it’s interesting to note there is little info on this on the BBC site itself, particularly on its archive pages).
The plans are not new. Back in 2006, there were reports about this as well.
As often happens when the BBC gets involved, other providers are might be a little nervous about the effect of this.
With the power of the BBC brand and its related marketing strength, and the undoubted brilliance of technologies like the iPlayer, does this not mean that all users, irrespective of background, go straight to the BBC for their video content, rendering the offerings of other content providers somewhat useless?
Other content providers, such as JISC-funded projects like Newsfilm Online or InView will certainly have to work harder at persuading users to visit their site. However, compelling reasons do exist for getting those users to come.
- Comparative video - for instance, InView (due to launch in Spring 2009) is providing comparative videos, which allow users to see how different media outlets have covered the same historical event - something the BBC obviously cannot do by itself.
- Unique content- Newsfilm Online (the full version of which is due to launched on October 3 2008) will have content simply unavailable to the BBC. To choose at random - news items relating to Bird Flu, the Twin Towers attack or, from early Gaumont Screen reels, highlights from England Australia cricket matches, and also film rushes which never made it to the TV screen.
- NewsFilm Online will also provide a different editorial viewpoint, delivering content from media sources such as ITN and Reteurs, rather than the Beeb.
- Both the JISC-funded projects will be making their content freely available to the HE and FE communities, not just for streaming but to download, remix and re-edit. The flexibility to allow users to do what they want with such video clips is vital if users are to exploit the resources in as many ways as possible.
- It’s also worth remembering that the BBC, however impartial, sees the world via a British lens. Perspectives from other countries are supplied by digitisation projects by the National Archives in the United States, or various national bodies in the Netherlands, France or Norway.
- Additionally, the BBC is more news-focussed, and, although the BBC seems to represent a huge mass of content, it is only a drop in the ocean of what could be digitised and made available online.
- So for example, the Performance Shakespeare collection, which is part of Film and Sound Online and the Arts on Film Archive can focus on performing arts content not readily available from the BBC archives.
So that all goes to show there are plenty of reasons for users to work with video content beyond that made available via the BBC (which it should not be forgotten is only talking about these plans for digitisation at the moment).
But other content providers need to have focussed marketing and communications plans to ensure users are aware of this.
Public libraries digitising music
During a recent meeting on digitisation in the EU, the JISC Digitisation Programme came across this interesting digitisation model from the Rotterdam Central Record Library
- The library in Rotterdam owns 300,000 CDs (including mainstream stuff)
- They are digitising every CD
- CDs are then lent digitally, ie via Internet, to library users (for free)
- Users can use the tracks for a limited period before DRM kicks in and blocks use
- Publishers were initially suspicious but have been won over because users are now getting access to stuff that they never knew of before - and then they buy it if they like it
Using Sound in Education - Sound Archives User Panel
The Archive Sound Recording Project is developing its user panel, and holding a related event on 11th March 2008. Details below
The British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings (www.bl.uk/sounds) is a JISC funded project to make selected material from the Sound Archive available online to Higher and Further Education institutions. The project will be hosting a User Community event on 11th March at the British Library, St Pancras, for academics and postgraduate students who would like to become more actively involved with the service.
Reflecting the material we are making available, we are looking for specialists in Art and Design, Art History, Media, English, History, Social Sciences, Music, African Studies, Zoology, Political, Religious and Cultural Studies.
User Community members will have the opportunity to influence the direction and development of the project, support the development of case studies, host workshops, give conference papers and work with us to encourage use of the resource in the academic community.
There are two levels of involvement: User Panel members will be asked to attend a small number of meetings and workshop sessions during 2008 and early 2009, and Online Community members are invited to contribute from afar. Due to the large amount of interest that has been shown in the User Panel, we may have to be selective regarding membership of the Panel itself. Contributions by members of the Online Community are equally valuable to the project, as ultimately the community engaging with the website will be entirely online.
If you are interested in attending the event please send me an email (ginevra.house AT bl.uk) with a short CV or a link to your web-page. Places are limited, and we may have to select attendees to ensure an even spread of academic disciplines and geographical area.
Ginevra House
Engagement Officer
Archival Sound Recordings Project
British Library
The scale of digitisation
The JISC’s Digitisation Advisory Group met at the British Film Institute (BFI) Archives in Berkhamsted, north of London.
The BFI leads the JISC’s InView project, which is digitising 600 hours of unique moving image materials from their collection.
However, as a tour organised by senior preservation manager Andrea Kalas demonstrated such digitisation is just scratching the surface of the material available to digitise.
Thousands and thousands of reels covered the walls of the air-conditioned chambers at the archives.
Of course the work is not just about access but preservation as well, as is now well documented plenty of film material is at risk, especially the self-inflammatory nitrate
based films.
To add to the difficulty, machines need to be maintained which can read and therefore convert to digital form the original media for the film. The archives are awash with machines to undertake these tasks.
You Spin Me Round - Record Players Exhibition
As well as digitising several thousand sound files, the British Library Archival Sound Recordings project has made multiple digital images of record and music players from its artefacts collections.
This includes gramophones from the 1890s right up to Sony cassette decks from the 1970s.
The players have been photographed from multiple angles, allowing for the objects themselves to be rotated by the user.
