Headline News
Company: BBC
Sector: Media
Impact: Evidence & management information; Corporate Responsibility
Sponsor: Digital Archive Project and Information & Archives
Timescale: 2000-2005
Project brief
To introduce records and archive management principles to the capture and preservation of bbc.co.uk (originally BBC Online):
- ensuring that web design, content and user experience are kept as records of past broadcasts
- fulfilling legal and cultural obligations as public service broadcaster
- supporting research and reuse.
Business archives used by the team
- Digital objects published to bbc.co.uk
Outcomes and business benefit
- Launched online archiving policy to understand and develop archiving models for the web.
- Created BBC WebArchive providing access to a working version of bbc.co.uk excluding Real Media audio-visual files but with links through to BBC News Online and access to older pages directly uploaded to the system.
- Established complementary hard copy filing system for Head of BBC Online.
- Fulfilled legal obligations - Broadcasting Acts’ 90-day requirement to keep radio and TV programmes to support the Editorial Complaints Unit and its public complaints procedure.
- Fulfilled BBC “Charter” obligation to maintain a broadcast archive - interpreted to include all platforms.
- Created capability to retain websites for historical and research purposes - used successfully to commemorate the 10th anniversary of bbc.co.uk.
- Identified and fulfilled the BBC’s moral obligation to capture web content as cultural and socio-historical record; including pioneering technical experiments in web-archiving.
- Generated higher profile for BBC’s archive management culminating in the BBC’s first Online Archivist then New Media Archivist with the role extended to include all New Media platforms.