Dear Eve-Marie,
the BUFVC generally, and the Shakespeare Database and Discussion List in particular, are vital to my research and teaching. I would not have been able to carry out the research published in e.g. 'Shakespeares after Shakespeare' (Greenwood Press, 2007) or 'The Cambridge Companion to Popular Culture' (CUP 2007) without access to TRILT or the TV Times digital archive, both hosted by BUFVC. As the International Shakespeare Database was developing I benefited as both a contributor and user, frequently through the Audio-Visual Shakespeare Discussion List, which remains a lively virtual meeting place for sharing information and views among the international community of scholars working in this field. Information from the Database fed directly into the design of a research project funded by the British Academy on radio in North America, and is a constant reference point in my current monograph project on Shakespeare in English language radio, as it will be for a planned essay collection on television Shakespeare, and a number of forthcoming essays. I was therefore delighted to be asked to contribute to the Researcher's Guide published as an additional part of the original AHRC funded project to create an international audio-visual Shakespeare database. This publication, together with the reviews and articles published in 'Viewfinder', are yet another example of the centrality of the BUFVC's initiatives to studies of Shakespearian media and its reception. The significance of its resources for research is reflected in its use value in teaching. My students are expected to use the Database as their first point of information for any individual research. Indeed contributing indirectly to the continual updating of the Database is an important way in which students can themselves become engaged in the processes of information gathering, and perhaps eventually be inspired to embark on a career in teaching, research, or production.
At an institutional level, working as I do across Departments of Drama and of Film and Media Studies, the BUFVC's resources are equally important in my non-Shakespearian teaching, as I know they are to my colleagues. We benefit daily (if not hourly) from BUFVC, especially through TRILT and its backup of offair broadcasts, now available in digital and streamed forms. I can't imagine that there is any programme or Department in my University which doesn't similarly depend on the BUFVC's resources, training, and research into the uses of audio-visual technology in higher education (e.g. the recent symposium on identifying and preserving irreplacable material currently lodged on deteriorating videos in university collections across the UK).
The BUFVC and its Shakespeare initiatives require and deserve every support possible, even - or especially - in these straitened times!
Susanne Greenhalgh,
Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies,
Director, Centre for Research in Renaissance Studies,
Roehampton University London.
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