Anthony,
Do you envision any difficulties for accessibility from outside of the UK?
Darrell M. Newton, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Media and Cultural Studies
The Department of Communication Arts
Salisbury University
269 Fulton Hall
Salisbury, MD 21801
(410) 677-5060 Office
(410) 543-6229 Department
http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~dmnewton/
>>> Anthony McNicholas <[log in to unmask]> 01/12/09 6:59 AM >>>
As promised, I have enquired about the status of the public version of INFAX,
the BBC's internal sound and vision catalogue. As you will know, an
experimental version of this was put up in order for us to test it, to iron out
glitches. It immediately highlighted serious data protection concerns and had
to be taken down.
It is still the BBC's intention to put a version back up on line. There are at
present 3 different approaches to this: one the BBC's own, which is
progressing, but slowly; the BFI union catalogue project, funded by the DCMS
which the BBC may become involved in - this path would mean some form of
the BBC catalogue would be accessible this way, through the BFI; the
Europeana project which is a huge Europe wide scheme which the BBC is again
discussing participation in.
Whichever is the eventual method of getting the catalogue back up there are
technical issues to be solved. these are not insurmountable and just depend
on the money and people hours available. The more serious and time-
consuming problems are with the nature of the material itself. The catalogue
which was created over a long period of time and for internal purposes
contained a lot of information which could cause difficulties as a public
document. An online catalogue would legally be a broadcast or a publication
and would therefore need to meet current standards on compliance, editorial
policy etc. It would have to satisfy Ofcom. Most of the material was created
at a time when no one had heard of such things.
In short, I am told it will be back. I will keep you informed.
anthony
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