BUFVC Case Studies (draft)
The BUFVC provides a vital service to its 258 members, as well as a number of public resources. The BUFVC connects teachers, learners and researchers with moving image and sound content and its staff deal directly with over 3,000 enquiries annually.
BUFVC – General
University of Bristol:
“As Head of Education in the Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television at University of Bristol I make extensive use of BUFVC services in my teaching and I recommend the website to all students as a fantastic research resource.
In my role co-directing the MA in Archaeology for Screen Media I actively use TRILT, the Moving Image Gateway and Archives and Footage in my teaching and in my research. Murray Weston has contributed significantly to the course in the past by giving our students excellent seminars on copyright and clearance for moving image. And I’ve attended BUFVC courses and have recommended them highly to colleagues and to students.
The regular Viewfinder magazine is always excellent and I’ve greatly enjoyed reading it as a unique opportunity to see the rich range of interdisciplinary research and teaching that investigate and use screen practices.
I know that my job would be significantly more difficult without the BUFVC.”
Angela Piccini, Lecturer in Screen Studies, Head of Education, Drama: Theatre, Film, Television, University of Bristol
University for the Creative Arts at Canterbury :
“The fundamental purpose for the University for the Creative Arts at Canterbury joining the BUFVC originally was to gain access to its off-air recording back-up service. However, whilst this aspect has been of indisputable assistance to us over the years, the BUFVC has provided us with a wealth of additional benefits.
The University Library is indebted to the BUFVC, above all in its capacity as an advisory service. Representatives have demonstrated empathy with the Central Services’ Visual Resources’ team in relation to complex matters such as the appropriate retention of imported films within our collections. They have consistently responded with clarification and guidance. Given the extensive costs, both time-wise and financially, associated with procuring best practice legal guidance, the BUFVC has undoubtedly delivered value-for-money.
Additionally the BUFVC has supported learning, teaching and research in our institution through its course provision. In particular, and most recently, The Power of the VHS: a BUFVC one-day meeting had an invaluable impact on our plans for the archiving and preservation of our off-air collections.
The BUFVC has firmly established itself as a ‘Trailblazer’, in terms of its ability to recommend developments that this institution has subsequently adopted. For example, the BUFVC provided the impetus for our investigation into Digital Off-Air Recording systems.
Through its back-up service, advisory capacity, one-day courses and its remarkable aptitude for being able to facilitate the performance-enhancing steering of AV units, such as our own, through the required modernisation for a sustainable future, the BUFVC is undoubtedly a unique organisation which should be both revered and preserved for the future.”
Julia Cook, Visual Resources Librarian, University for the Creative Arts at Canterbury
Carshalton College:
Carshalton College is a medium-sized general further education college located on one site in south London. Courses offered to the 4000 or so learners attending the college range from pre-entry to degree level, but are focused predominately on vocational disciplines such as preparation for life and work, engineering, business, administration and law, health, public services and care.
Carshalton College has used the BUFVC Information Service to search for resources to match the range of courses offered by the college. Although it is not always possible to find exactly what is needed, the Service has always offered e-learning librarian Diane Wilson prompt and helpful advice:
“Some topics, such as child development, appear more frequently in broadcast programmes than, say, electrical engineering, but the BUFVC has always been quick in responding to my enquiries and, if there’s a gap in what we provide, there is a good chance of filling it.”
Diane Wilson, e-Learning Librarian, Carshalton College
Carshalton College has found membership of the BUFVC good value for money. Firstly, the services the BUFVC provides come at a lower cost than might be spent on an equivalent range of commercially produced resources. Replacing ageing VHS tape stock with DVDs is a further benefit the college has enjoyed from membership of the BUFVC – now that DVD projectors and SMART™ Boards are being installed in classrooms at Carshalton College, lecturers need to access their favourite audio-visual resources in new formats.
“Students get very involved in topics that have been explored or illustrated in a television programme. Students quite often tell us that something relevant to their course came up in the previous night’s programming. Using the BUFVC’s Off-air Recording Back-Up Service can help us bring that programme into the classroom while it is still fresh in everyone’s minds.”
Nicola Laver, Curriculum Manager for health and social care, early years and dentistry, Carshalton College
Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust:
“I work in the Library of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. This is a Mental Health Trust that provides professional training to clinicians, therapists and social workers up to PhD level. In 2003, when I took over as the sole person responsible for our current and archive audiovisual collections, it was all on video or audiocassette and a large proportion of our archive was at risk of becoming inaccessible to users because of formatting, copyright or cataloguing problems. I knew our resources would be limited and I had very little expertise myself, with no idea where to begin.
The Trust became members of the BUFVC after I had attended some of their excellent courses. I would never have been able to keep up-to-date without the help of BUFVC staff who have always been knowledgeable, patient and helpful. Audiovisual technology is rapidly changing and can be expensive and therefore, it is really important to have an authoritative source of information.
Our ERA collection from 1989-to present is unrecognisable now. With BUFVC support I’ve completed a project to make it all available on DVD, enhanced with summaries from the TRILT database which are searchable on our catalogue. Loans to students and staff have quadrupled and many more staff are using AV in seminars.
BUFVC staff have helped us conserve our audio recordings of significant lectures and conferences by digitising 200 cassettes for us, making them much easier to review, and we hope to podcast them in the future.
I regularly use the BUFVC databases, particularly TRILT which I depend on (it has saved me so much time). I use Find a DVD and the Moving Image Gateway to find relevant resources for research and training in the Trust and pass on links to the information via a dedicated Audiovisual Moodle page for staff and students or Twitter.
We are now looking forward to making full use of our ERA Plus Licence by helping staff create clips for their course pages on Moodle and we had a very positive response from them when we had a recent trial of BoB National. The Trust is seriously considering e-learning now and I am very grateful that the BUFVC has helped us upgrade our audiovisual collection so that it will continue to be a valuable teaching resource in the future.”
Karen Ashwell, AV Librarian, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
The Council for British Archaeology:
“The Council for British Aarchaeology has long wanted to support the use of audio-visual media in archaeology. On our own we are a small charity with limited resources. However, we were able to set up a joint committee with the BUFVC to further this aim. The committee would have been impossible to run without the input and resources of the BUFVC. The staff at the BUFVC were the eyes and ears of the committee, able to provide intelligence of the latest programmes and copies of these for viewing and review. The committee has now wound up and been replaced by a research centre (CASPAR) at University College London. The information held by the BUFVC was essential in helping to launch CASPAR. Had the BUFVC not been there, our work would have been impossible.”
Don Henson, Head of Education, The Council for British Archaeology
BUFVC, TRILT and Off-Air Recording Back-up Service
TRILT is the Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching – the most powerful and comprehensive online database and personalised alert service for broadcasts received in the UK. It carries more than 10 million records of television and radio programmes with links to courses of copies.
The Off-Air Recording Back-up Service is an essential service for those needing to acquire copies of content they missed the opportunity to record locally. The BUFVC currently records BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, ITV1, Channel 4, Five and More4 (from June 2010), BBC Radio 4 (since September 2008) and BBC Radio 7 (since September 2009).
Queen Margaret University:
“For some years now Queen Margaret University has made much use of the BUFVC’s services, especially TRILT and the Off-Air Back up facility. The Educational Resource Centre here at QMU has responsibility for off-air recording amongst other things and staff in the unit regularly make use of these two services. I know that several of our professional Library staff also use these services as well as researchers and academic staff.
TRILT is especially useful when looking for a programme that has either already been aired or is scheduled to be aired and being linked to the Back-Up service means we can request programmes we may have missed or ones that are now required but had not been requested to record in the past. I personally have found both these services to be extremely worthwhile and I make regular use of them.
The BUFVC listen to suggestions from service users and make changes according to suggestions, provided these are possible.
QMU will continue to make use of these two very worthwhile services offered by BUFVC.”
Jim Bain, Educational Resource Centre Manager, Queen Margaret University
University of Wales, Swansea:
“I have used this service on many occasions to request recordings of programmes on TV or Radio and on most occasions I have found it a simple and straight forward system to use. If I have ever experienced problems and had to contact ourselves for help I have always found the person very helpful. Dominic has been the one I have mostly dealt with as many of my requests were for regional programmes which was sorted out very promptly. I look forward to using this service in the future.”
Louise King, University of Wales, Swansea
University of Westminster:
“From March 2010 the University of Westminster was unable to access TRILT using Shibboleth/institutional log-in. The BUFVC alerted us to the issue before we even realised what the problem might be and was extremely pro-active in providing us with technical information and support to resolve the issue. Although we were aware that Shibbolth was being upgraded this problem occurred earlier than we had expected and made access impossible to some resources including TRILT. During this time Frazer Ash and the BUFVC were extremely efficient and helpful in providing us with the information and missed recordings that we needed.”
Eleri Kyffin, Senior Academic Liaison Librarian, University of Westminster
BUFVC and BoB National
BoB National – which the BUFVC launched at the JISC Conference 2009 – is a persistent ‘see/hear it again’ shared service for access to broadcasts post-transmission. Having started in December 2008 the service already provides access to over 30,000 archived television and radio programmes to more than 14,500 staff and students from over 20 UK universities and colleges. In the last year, over 360,000 programmes and clips were watched by users.
The University of Portsmouth:
“The University of Portsmouth has considerable experience using video material to enhance the quality of learning and teaching. We make good use of off-air recording, but until the launch of BoB National this involved expensive equipment, administrative overhead and technician time. Our academic staff are now able to record material quickly and easily and the excellent clip creation feature makes BoB very easy to use in teaching. As an essentially shared service, BoB National has reduced the need for us to deploy own own infrastructure, saving capital as well as helping us manage our carbon footprint.”
Andrew Minter, Director of Information Services, The University of Portsmouth
Croydon College:
Croydon College started using BoB National in October 2009. Previously the College recorded its own television programmes and made these available to students and staff through its library services, although students were unable to borrow the items.
“Since launching BoB across the college in November 2009 it has very quickly become our most heavily accessed on-line resource. This is in spite of it being introduced after all the learners had received library inductions and the big opportunity to promote resources had past.
We’ve been exceptionally impressed with the BoB service, not only because we’ve been able to roll out off-site access to ERA materials, and eliminate all the issues we’ve previously had with missed recordings and failed equipment, it’s also meant we’ve been able to completely do away with off-air recording and reinvest the staff time in delivering frontline services to our learners.”
Tom Butler, Head of Library, Information and Print Services, Croydon College
“It’s always a joy to find a resource that is so easy to market and useful for education.
When I talk about BoB as a resource to teachers and learners I always get a positive response. It’s a no brainer really, free programmes that you can stream on your personal computer, on an interactive whiteboard or simply embedded into a course on our VLE.”
Emily Walker, VLE Manager, Croydon College
Benefits of BoB National for Croydon College:
- By not using the old in-house system the College can now dedicate more staff to frontline activities, benefit from greater storage space where the old system was set-up and no longer has to replace equipment or be concerned over missing recordings. This has resulted in substantial savings for the College. Previously the equivalent of nearly one full-time staff member was required to run the College’s television recording operations.
- The College can promote suitable and targeted recordings to students within different departments.
- It allows the College to provide a more professional, streamlined service to both staff and students.
- The College can now provide off-site access to material, where as before DVDs were not loaned to students.
- Bob already contained a substantial background of recordings (approx. 20,000) when Croydon College joined in October 2009 allowing the College to start using the system immediately to full effect.
- The College benefits from having access to radio recordings, which were not recorded using the previously in the in-house system.
Usage of BoB National by Croydon College:
- Since the College adopted BoB National it has become a well-used and popular e-resource – overtaking all other e-resources and matching the most popular (up to 28 May 2010).
- BoB National is mostly used by Higher Eeducation staff and students.
- The library staff find it easy to curate recordings and playlists.
User case study:
Andrew Osborne, Literacy Support Manager, Croydon College
“As a Literacy Support Manager at Croydon College, I recently used BoB National to support a student in developing their debating skills, through using the previously broadcast Question Time in which the leader of the British National Party (BNP) – Nick Griffin – appeared.
By using this particular programme the student could view clips, produced using BoB, of ways in which people physically communicate. This particular programme of Question Time provided the possibility to view body language and visual cues, including baton signals, prosody and body language. Question Time also provides a natural environment and is not heavily scripted or directed.
The student is currently taking an Access to Humanities course at Croydon College and has a history of dyslexia and homelessness. One of the key advantages of using BoB for this particular student is that he is able to access BoB from internet cafes and friend’s computers to complete his studies and does not need to own his own computer, or be in one fixed place.”
City of Glasgow College (Central College Glasgow, Glasgow College of Nautical Studies and Glasgow Metropolitan College):
“Box of Broadcasts has greatly benefited the college’s learning and teaching, in many ways, from involving the students in selecting resources suitable for their course (recording programmes) to lecturer’s using recordings within the classroom environment and on the VLE.
The Library Service was looking to establish a digital ‘area’ to store audio and media recordings. Box of Broadcasts presented a solution to this and it has provided the college’s staff and students with a common central repository for audio and media files which importantly, provides remote, simultaneous, 24/7 access. This was especially important to us as we found more and more students requiring remote access to resources in order to study at home.
As it involves the student in selecting resources for their course, it also encourages them to be more creative in producing assignments, for example, using a BoB clip in a presentation. Similarly it has enabled lecturer’s to create a more interactive and dynamic lecture, by including snippets of programmes to illustrate a point they wish to get across-maybe something that would seem quite dry in spoken word can be transformed by the use of an appropriate BoB clip. This is important as students have many different learning styles and respond differently to different mediums, so to have the option to have so many audio/visual resources available is fantastic. As BoB is so intuitive to use, it really makes using audio/visual resources incredibly easy for students and staff.
BoB supports the creative industries area really well so our School of Design and our School of Communication and Media are heavy users of the service. This covers courses from Fine Art to Photography to Graphic Design. Having so many visual resources at their disposal really benefits these students as they are studying ‘visual’ subjects.
However, BoB has also been of huge benefit to our other Schools as well, for example the Built Environment School are also heavy users of BoB. Similarly, BoB covers the subject areas of Food, Sport, Hospitality and Tourism really well, which again is one of our Schools. I think BoB is a very good overall resource for the college curriculum as there is always something there for everyone.
From a library point of view, BoB removes the often laborious administration from library staff in trying to record and often, hunt down tv recordings. By involving staff and students in the recording of programmes, this allows them to record the programmes that they know will be suitable, and it is done so quickly, at the click of a button.
Lastly, the service from BUFVC people has been great, if there is an issue, which is rare, I can be sure that it will be dealt with efficiently.”
Nicola Buddo, Digital Librarian, City of Glasgow College
BUVFC and Research and/or Databases
To assist members in finding the content and information they need a series of databases are available. The databases help in finding any programme broadcast in the UK, an educational DVD from a niche distributor, to mainstream websites and a film from the most comprehensive database of newsreels in existence. In total more than 12,500,000 records are available to be searched and over 100,000 searches are registered each month.
Roehampton University, London:
“The BUFVC generally, and the Shakespeare Database and Discussion List in particular, are vital to my research and teaching. I would not have been able to carry out the research published in e.g. ‘Shakespeares after Shakespeare’ (Greenwood Press, 2007) or ‘The Cambridge Companion to Popular Culture’ (CUP 2007) without access to TRILT or the TV Times digital archive, both hosted by BUFVC. As the International Shakespeare Database was developing I benefited as both a contributor and user, frequently through the Audio-Visual Shakespeare Discussion List, which remains a lively virtual meeting place for sharing information and views among the international community of scholars working in this field. Information from the Database fed directly into the design of a research project funded by the British Academy on radio in North America, and is a constant reference point in my current monograph project on Shakespeare in English language radio, as it will be for a planned essay collection on television Shakespeare, and a number of forthcoming essays. I was therefore delighted to be asked to contribute to the Researcher’s Guide published as an additional part of the original AHRC funded project to create an international audio-visual Shakespeare database. This publication, together with the reviews and articles published in ‘Viewfinder’, are yet another example of the centrality of the BUFVC’s initiatives to studies of Shakespearian media and its reception. The significance of its resources for research is reflected in its use value in teaching.
My students are expected to use the Shakespeare Database as their first point of information for any individual research. Indeed contributing indirectly to the continual updating of the Database is an important way in which students can themselves become engaged in the processes of information gathering, and perhaps eventually be inspired to embark on a career in teaching, research, or production.
At an institutional level, working as I do across Departments of Drama and of Film and Media Studies, the BUFVC’s resources are equally important in my non-Shakespearian teaching, as I know they are to my colleagues. We benefit daily (if not hourly) from BUFVC, especially through TRILT and its backup of offair broadcasts, now available in digital and streamed forms. I can’t imagine that there is any programme or Department in my University which doesn’t similarly depend on the BUFVC’s resources, training, and research into the uses of audio-visual technology in higher education (e.g. the recent symposium on identifying and preserving irreplacable material currently lodged on deteriorating videos in university collections across the UK).
The BUFVC and its Shakespeare initiatives require and deserve every support possible, even – or especially – in these straitened times!”
Susanne Greenhalgh, Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, Director, Centre for Research in Renaissance Studies, Roehampton University London
University of Leeds:
Professor Kim Knott and Dr Elizabeth Poole at the University of Leeds co-direct a research project on ‘Media portrayals of religion and the secular sacred in British newspapers and on terrestrial TV’, which forms part of a large research programme on Religion and Society funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council. The project replicates research conducted in 1982-83 on the portrayal of religion in three daily newspapers and on three terrestrial television channels. In order to make rigorous comparisons between findings from the early 1980s and the late 2000s, it has been necessary to use the same methodology – in the case of television, to collect data from one week’s output of all programmes on BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. In 1982 the University of Leeds was able to undertake all the necessary recording of material, but not in 2008.
“Fortunately BUFVC was willing to discuss our needs and find an appropriate way to meet them. The work of the BUFVC was vital in enabling this comparative, longitudinal research to be undertaken, and ultimately in allowing us to consider the ways in which the portrayal of religion on television has changed in the last 25 years in light of social, political and media transformations.”
Professor Kim Knott and Dr Elizabeth Poole, University of Leeds
Queen’s University, Belfast:
“I have benefited greatly from the Shakespeare database. The BUFVC listings have provided me with the basis for the films I am discussing in my current book, Shakespeare and World Cinema (contracted with Cambridge University Press), a project that has been externally funded by the AHRC (Research Leave Scheme) and by the Folger Shakespeare Library (a short-term fellowship).”
Prof. Mark Burnett, Queen’s University, Belfast
Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA:
“I see the Shakespeare database as an essential resource: the authoritative and most comprehensive database for Shakespeareans working in media history. I’ve used it in two ways. 1) for my own research (for example, for a monograph chapter that focus on Shakespeare documentaries, and for an article on mid-20th-century adaptations of Romeo and Juliet). 2) As the most comprehensive bibliographic resource, comparable to the AFI catalogue in its quality but much deeper in Shakespearean material.”
Katherine Rowe, Chair and Professor of English, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA
University of Florida, USA:
“I have enjoyed having a forum where I can post information that may be of interest to scholars working on Shakespeare and film, particularly Shakespeare spin-offs and citations of Shakespeare in films. The forum is essential, in my view, to anyone working in this area of research. There is no other database like it.”
Professor Richard Burt, Department of English and Film and Media Studies Program, University of Florida, USA
Louisiana State University, USA:
“I have found the Shakespeare Database an invaluable source for information about film versions of the plays, many of which I would have known nothing about had it not been for this Database. There are numerous European and other “foreign” film versions (and other media) of Shakespeare’s plays that are not covered or inadequately covered in other sources, printed and electronic. Many thanks to the BUFVC for making this wonderful resources available online!”
Prof. James H. Lake, Department of English, Louisiana State University, USA
Southern Oregon University, USA:
“I am a frequent user of the BUFVC Shakespeare database. I could not do the kind of research that I do without it because of its near completeness and the accuracy of its information.
I research Shakespeare and modern culture, especially in the media. I am preparing a book proposal to study Shakespeare in BBC radio, and have logged onto the database a number of times to nail down details for the proposal. I’ll probably log-on hundreds more times as I write the book. It is especially useful in tracking actors and directors and their contribution of the Shakespeare radio canon, and for graphing the number of times a play has been produced. It also helps me identify programs with non-adaptive Shakespeare content, such as radio documentaries, review programmes, and radio plays inspired by Shakespeare’s life and works.
I will teach a course on Shakespeare and modern culture in the fall. The BUFVC Shakespeare database will be a valuable resource to students as we work through the radio and television sections of the course. It will help them discover programmes not discussed in class and this can enrich their study.”
Michael P. Jensen, Southern Oregon University
Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy:
“Like many others, my work has benefited enormously from the International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio, and so have my students at the University of Salerno (Italy). They have used the entries/descriptions for their undergraduate course projects and/or final dissertations. The Discussion list related to the database has been over the years an exciting forum to share knowledge on Shakespeare and the media, and has contributed to create a sense of community among scholars working in this area. I therefore sincerely hope that there will be continued investment in the development of the Shakespeare Database.”
Prof. Maurizio Calbi, Dip. di Studi linguistici e letterari, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, Italy:
“I have often used the International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio and have found it an excellent tool for research. I hope the database will indeed stay ‘alive and kicking’.”
Prof Anna Maria Cimitile, Dipartimento degli Studi Letterari e Linguistici dell’Europa, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, Italy
The University of North Carolina:
“I am a retired faculty member living near Asheville, North Carolina. Since 1998, I have taught some thirty-five courses on Shakespeare to large numbers of intelligent, lively , intellectually curious and often tough-minded folk from all professions and all walks of life in the University of North Carolina’s thriving College for Seniors. Since my personal circumstances severely limit travel, this website has been a godsend, providing remarkably rich and often unusual information which I share, via email, with my students.
Thank you for the excellent work done by the BUFVC and the rich resources you provide.”
Mario A. DiCesare, Distinguished Professor, emeritus, State University of New York
