British Universities Film & Video Council

The humble VHS is, rightly, regarded as a disposable commodity and not an archive medium, but the recordings on these cassettes are sometimes unique and irreplaceable. Since 1989 UK Universities and Colleges have created sizeable collections of valuable recordings on VHS. Today however many universities need to reduce storage space and are shifting to other AV carrier media such as DVD or Blu-ray – so what is happening to all those VHS cassettes?

This meeting will address these urgent issues and will explore:

• low-cost digitisation and content transfer from VHS
• the creation of a union catalogue for copies of broadcast programmes in educational establishments
• results from the recent BUFVC UK national survey of off-air collections
• proposal for extension of ‘shared services’ for off-air recording
• online access for programmes retained in educational establishments under licence

Please register by filling in the booking form (event information sheet is included).

The meeting will commence at 10.30 am at BFI Southbank in London and run to no later than 4.00 pm.  Lunch will be included and the BUFVC will run its formal Annual General Meeting for 30 minutes around lunchtime (see programme below).

The registration fee is £35 per person for non-BUFVC members and £25 for BUFVC members. If you do not know if your institution is a BUFVC member please call 020 7393 1500 for assistance.

Programme

10.00 am Registration

10.30 am Introduction to the key issues – Murray Weston (MW), Chief Executive, BUFVC

11.00 am Licensing and issues around copying content, sharing and online access  (MW)

11.30 am Results of the BUFVC national survey of UK off air recording collections in HE/FE – Luís Carrasqueiro (LC), Deputy Chief Executive, BUFVC

11.45 am BoB National and the BUFVC’s new shared services proposal (LC)

12.15 pm Easy digitisation of VHS tapes (LC)

12.30 pm How to discard recorded VHS, legal issues and designated archives.  (LC, MW)

1.00 – 2.00 pm LUNCH (from 1:30 pm informal BUFVC AGM discussion commences in NFT3; formal proceedings of Annual General Meeting to conclude before 2:15 pm)

2.15 pm Managing a large VHS collection. Examples from UK Higher Education and the BUFVC. Panel discussion

3.00 pm VHS, the technical story – Charles Fairall, Senior Preservation Manager, Audio and Video, BFI National Archive

3.30 pm Assessing large VHS collections – past experiences – Dick Fiddy, TV Consultant, BFI and author of Missing, Believed Wiped.

3.45 pm Summary of discussions, proposals and actions resulting from the meeting (MW)

Please register by filling in the booking form (event information sheet is included).