Shared Services Survey

The Project

The British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC), supported by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE), is surveying the extent and range of broadcast programme recordings made and stored in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) under the Educational Recording Agency (ERA) licence system and copyright exception.

Project aims and objectives

The survey is part of a feasibility study for a shared service which would build on recent developments in the licensing system and in recording technology to increase the availability and accessibility of licensed off-air broadcast recordings. These developments offer a number of potential benefits including:

• access to a continuously expanding working library of radio and television content under licence
• users making and managing their own recordings
• a union catalogue, enhancing the opportunity to share recordings and
• a potential reduction in the costs of local storage and duplication of recordings

A shared service could benefit everyone in UK Higher Education who uses licensed broadcast programmes for educational purposes and could subsequently be extended to include Further Education.

Please help us gain a better picture of current activity and give us your views on how things could be improved by completing the survey questionnaire.

If you would like to know more about the project please contact Eve-Marie Oesterlen or Olwen Terris at sharedservices@bufvc.ac.uk or call 020 7393 1502