BORDER TELEVISION NEWS AND ARCHIVE LIBRARY

Description: Border Television serves all but the extreme south of Cumbria, the Isle of Man, Dumfries and Galloway, and Scottish Borders. Holdings include news and current affairs, sport, documentary, light entertainment, music, children’s programmes, travel and local interest material.
Website: http://www.itvregions.com/border
Keywords: Isle of Man; Cumbria; Borders region, Scotland; Carlisle; Dumfries and Galloway
Access: Access ia available but limited. Both film research staff are involved closely with the newsroom whose requirements take priority as such research for outside bodies is done when there is available time. In situations where very old or obscure items are being sought the research time required can be considerable, although as more data is transferred onto the computer system it is projected that this should improve.
Copyright: Copyright advice and costings can be gained from either Tony Steer, Adrian Mallinson or Ken Wynne. There are charges for research for broadcast purposes, VHS viewing off premises, research for academic use, for facilities and handling, viewing on site, broadcast rights and other services. Please note that blooper footage is limited and that use of such footage must be agreed upon by the Director of Programmes. Equally so, all Border footage of sporting events must be cleared for broadcast with the relevant sporting body before it can be used.

Video/Film: Film, 1 inch, VHS, Beta and Digi formats. Studio footage is limited and there are no full broadcast quality examples of the regional news programme in existence, though VHS logs have been kept since 1997. (Attempts are underway to build a Lookaround digital log library, however.)
Storage: One-inch tapes of programmes and camera rushes are stored in a nearby warehouse and recorded on computer, while all 2-inch programmes are held by the National Film and Television Archive. Again, the prior system for recording programmes and camera rushes was haphazard and, as such, items have been lost over time. However, a full stock-take of what is in existence has now been taken and all current programmes in production are recorded under a system that records individual camera tape, what is on each tape, where it is located, or by whom it is currently being used.

Computerised database: The Library has documented on a new computer system all regional news and sports packages held on Beta since 1987, along with all programmes produced and in production since 1999. All items and programmes prior to that are held on film or Beta and are registered on a manual system which is slowly being transferred to the computer system.
Documentation in the past has been somewhat lax and, as such, locating older programmes can take time. This again is constantly being improved upon and entered on the computer. The Library has undergone restructuring and re-staffing in the last two years and now a full cataloguing and classification project is underway, along with a strict policy on data storage and information retrieval.

Name: Mr. Tony Steer
Job title: Film Research Manager
Telephone: 01228 525101
Fax: 01228 541384
Email: dutyoffice@itv.com
Address: Border Television plc
Television Centre
Harraby Industrial Estate
Carlisle
CA1 3NT

This record has been viewed 18041 times.

British Universities Film & Video Council