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SCONUL Focus 44 2008
Developing alibrary off-airrecording service
Daren Mansfeld
Academic Subject Librarian,University o Lincoln Library Tel: 01522 886094E-mail: dmansfeld@lincoln.ac.uk
As a subject librarian for journalism at the Uni-
versity of Lincoln, I nd it not only essential toproduce off-air recordings of TV or radio pro
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grammes, but to review the curriculum relevanceof our audiovisual (AV) collection. When the AVcollection was reviewed earlier in 2008 manyissues arose, necessitating the possibility to rejuve
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nate the collection and address the considerationthat students prefer media material to be avail
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able in modern format. Simply by browsing otheruniversity websites it became apparent that thelibrary could revitalise its off-air recording service by offering in-house departmental request forms,contact details and procedures. One of the most
comprehensive examples is Bournemouth Univer-
sity’s 2008 off-air request webpage, which con
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tains useful sections for student and staff off-airrecording requests, programmes requested after broadcast, off-air news and nding programmes.
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Rejuvenating the collection produced a two-foldsummer project in creating an autonomous off-airrecording service and transferring off-air recordedvideos to DVD format.The initial part of the project involved setting upan off-air recording facility in the library. Optionsfor obtaining off-air recordings currently involvethe purchase of educational videos from the OpenUniversity’s (2008) off-air recording scheme andmembership of the British Universities Film andVideo Council (BUFVC).
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BUFVC membershipenables the library to purchase up to 12 copies of ‘formerly broadcast television selected from theOff-Air Recording from BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, ITV1, Channel Four and Five’, with an archivestretching back to June 1998. While both of theseservices are extremely worthwhile they are ulti
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mately limited when compared to a fully estab
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lished off-air recording facility that responds tostaff and student requests with the ability to pre-record digital programmes. A possible solutionarrived when the university purchased a Freeviewfacility for the Lincoln campus library, meaningthat we could autonomously record radio and TVprogrammes under the Educational RecordingAgency (ERA) licence agreement.
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The next stage elicited a few considerations suchas the kind of service we could offer, how manylibrary staff to involve, the production of rel
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evant staff guides, training issues and whetherthe off-air service could be extended to staff andstudents. We opted for a restricted service to limit
the off-air service to in-house provision, because
of workload constraints. Such an inexpensivesolution meant that recording digital programmeswas simple, and gave us the idea to developa fresh curriculum-relevant off-air collection.Consequently, an off-air group was established,staff were trained in recording and burningprogrammes onto DVD and re-cataloguingtransferred DVDs, while procedures for deletingunwanted videos were drafted. To support theproject a contingency bid for appropriate fundingwas submitted on the basis of initially transfer
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ring 500 videos. Under copyright law, it wasonly possible to transfer off-air recordings thatthe library had produced. As videos could only be transferred in real time, I submitted a plan of how long it would to take to transfer these, whichamounted to a substantial summer project, withthree machines in operation to transfer videos toDVD. Auditing the audiovisual collection meantdeleting obsolete videos, ensuring copyrightcompliance and transferring curriculum-relevantoff-air videos to DVD. We also deleted obsoletepurchased videos, which could not be transferred because of copyright regulations. Because muchof the audiovisual collection was out of date andcontained worn videotape, hundreds of videoswere deleted. While manufacturers of CDs/DVDs suggest that they should last for a hundredyears, other sources suggest that CDs and DVDsare not as durable as they claim.
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Videotape obvi
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ously deteriorates after wear and tear, but alsodue to changes in room temperature and mag
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netic interference, with their usual lifespan lastingonly ten to fteen years. The project was also asalvage operation and many hundreds of videoswere deleted because they had deteriorated andwere unwatchable.To facilitate the project we purchased equipmentsuch as TVs, video players, DVD recorders, DVDsand DVD cases. In some cases, programmes had been recorded over, parts were missing or tapeshad been irretrievably damaged. In practice, thetransfer of videos to DVD was a start–stop proc
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ess, as most programmes lasted for about an hour
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Developing a Library Off Air Recording Service
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| Upload Date: | 12/15/2009 |
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