The BUFVC Moving Image Gateway includes over 1,400 websites relating to video, multimedia and sound materials. These have been subdivided into   over 40 subject areas. To suggest new entries or  amendments, please contact us by email or telephone or visit  the Gateway at  http://bufvc.ac.uk/gateway/

The Chemistry of Things
The English version of this Portuguese site (A Quimica das Coisas) aims to show the chemistry at work in daily life and how scientific developments contribute to the welfare of society. Each episode sees presenter Claudia Semedo talking about an everyday object – such as Post-It notes – from the point of view of what makes it interesting, chemically speaking. The site is an initiative of the Chemistry Department of the University of Aveiro and aims to communicate the importance of chemistry to the general public. The English version has subtitles and transcripts in English.

A Film Archive
In 2009 over 850 cans of film were rescued from a discard pile at a defunct Russian Cultural Centre in Amman, Jordan. Eventually they came to the attention of Matthew Epler, an American who was then teaching in Jordan. This website was created by Epler with the aim of use crowdsourcing to identify and translate the labels on the cans, with a view to eventually digitising the films and creating an online resource for scholars and researchers, as well as recovering the history of what appears to be a culturally significant find.

Epler and his colleagues photographed the label on each can and created an online database of images, with fields for researchers to comment. So far, with the assistance of interested researchers, nearly 600 labels have been translated. The material spans five decades from the 1930s to the 1980s and most of it comes from SovExportFilm, a Soviet film agency. A number of clips have been digitised and can be viewed here. Among the films identified so far are a documentary confirmed to be part of the PLO Film Archive, lost since 1985; footage of King Hussein in 1968 addressing the United Nations in the aftermath of the Six Day War and documentary footage of Jerusalem in 1968 and its aftermath.

The Psych Files
This popular and wide-ranging psychology podcast, which is hosted by psychologist Michael Britt, is aimed at students, teachers and interested critical thinkers. All aspects of psychology are covered, from Biopsychology, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality to Perception, Personality and Therapy. The podcast considers how theories of psychology relate to current events, and features discussions and interviews with leading practitioners. For students there are useful learning tools such as this video which helps learners to Memorise parts of the brain and a Mnemonic Device to memorise Erikson’s Eight Stages of Development. Most of the podcasts are accompanied by links to other resources and articles.

Significant Details – Conversations with Women in Science
This German website (with subtitles in English) consists of a series of video interviews with women scientists about their careers, lives and experiences with science. Each video takes as its starting point an object which is significant in some way to the women’s life as a scientist – an old sofa, a begonia, a fragment of rock – and then proceeds from there. This anecdotal approach makes for a fascinating and revealing series of interviews, in which these women talk about what motivates and drives them as they talk about how they balance the demands of career and personal life.

Words of the World
Academics from the University of Nottingham’s School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies present a series of short videos based on a single word which is significant to their research. The site’s homepage presents the words as a kind of crossword puzzle grid, to represent the interdisciplinary nature of the School. The user clicks on a word – Huguenot, Biscuit or Interstitial, to name but three – and is taken to the video in question. Like other sites designed by Brady Haran, this one features a simple, stylish, slightly quirky approach which allows the enthusiasm of the academics to come across, without obscuring or trivialising the seriousness of their research.