Anybody who thinks digital archive material will a. survive for long and b. be available for research, or even casual reference purposes, is an optimist indeed. Hard copy can be controlled in a way that digital material cant - as we are seeing in current news items. And so much survives on hard copy that is revealing, such as handwritten margin notes etc. I'm also hanging on to my videos.

Maire M Davies

Sent from my iPhone

On 22 Aug 2013, at 19:33, "Nick Higham" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Darrell
>
> Much of it, I suspect, has to do with the process by which information moves from being stuff in the filing cabinet in the corner of the office (largely ignored as irrelevant by people working day to day, probably not catalogued or indexed very well if at all, and thus having little or no value) to "archive material" which is obviously valued by historians.
>
> The BBC has historically been good at archiving programme material because it has obvious re-use value, and moderately good at archiving stuff produced by policy-makers and senior execs, if only because they have/had clerical assistants to file it and keep it in order.
>
> But lower down the organisation stuff will only get preserved for the long term if someone goes poking around offering to take departments' old files off their hands. (Or indeed old equipment, props etc etc)
>
> Much of this is academic now since paper files scarcely exist any more (encouraging for future historians because anything written in digital form is probably preserved somewhere, though I know to my cost that a lot of audio and video stored digitally has a very brief shelf-life indeed if one doesn't explicitly ask for it to be kept).
>
> The story of what happened to my personal "archive" when we moved from TV Centre may be instructive.
>
> I had a large filing cabinet in one office, a floor to ceiling cupboard in another.
>
> The cabinet had documents and cuttings acquired while researching stories. Since all research is now done online I had no hesitation in binning it all.
>
> The cupboard contained books, documents and tapes which I had consciously squirrelled away over the years on the grounds that they might have long-term value. But I hadn't visited it for two or three years. When I went down a few months before the move to remind myself what was there I found it was full of somebody else's stuff. God knows what happened to mine.
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 22 Aug 2013, at 18:43, "Darrell Newton" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I've always been very concerned about who makes the decisions on what's important enough for archiving and/or digitization. There are oh so many pieces of information related to West Indians, black Britons and the BBC that were destroyed or discounted as historically significant. Many documents and scripts of programming and such didn't survive the war, yet many were never recorded or kept. The reasons why are ours to ponder....
>>
>>
>> Darrell M. Newton, Ph.D.
>> Chair and Associate Professor
>> The Department of Communication Arts
>> Salisbury University
>> 260 Fulton Hall
>> Salisbury, MD 21801
>> (410) 677-5060 Office
>> (410) 543-6229 Department
>> http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~dmnewton/
>> ________________________________________
>> From: The History of the BBC [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martin Briscoe [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 12:44 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [BBC-HISTORY] Outside broadcast and live two-ways
>>
>> Some people seemed to get some strange satisfaction from smashing or burning
>> things.  I know out here in the sticks there was no interest in saving
>> material though I managed to save a few bits.
>>
>> One the other hand items of equipment would often be shipped down South at a
>> cost far exceeding its value when disposed of (probably scrap prices).
>>
>> Though how often do you see antiques programmes on BBC where the 'experts'
>> make no mention of donating documents to archives and on the daytime
>> antiques programme they are often sold for only trivial amounts.  I often
>> think that someone's Grandfather would much prefer his diaries or papers
>> went to an archive or museum rather than be sold for a tenner or so.
>>
>>
>>
>> Martin Briscoe
>> Fort William
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: The History of the BBC [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
>> Of Angela Smith
>> Sent: 22 August 2013 12:26
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [BBC-HISTORY] Outside broadcast and live two-ways
>>
>> Burning an archive????  No!!!!!  I've just been interviewed by local radio
>> about the use of exclamation marks, so I do apologise but it seems like a
>> perfectly reasonable way to express my horror at the destruction of an
>> archive.  In 50 years' time we are going to be left with nothing at all to
>> archive as it will all be electronic and thus deleted without a thought or
>> even a match.   Might the BBC not consider donating such archives to
>> academic centres for minions such as me to happily root through?  Failing
>> that, preserve Nigel cryogenically for defrosting at some future date when a
>> similar query arises?
>
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