British Library picks Cambridge Imaging

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The British Library has chosen Cambridge Imaging Systems to provide the digital video management technology required to host selected digital video files from the archives and to record, store, describe, locate and deliver access within the Library to television and radio news programmes.

Cambridge Imaging Systems’ Box of Broadcasts (BOB) package is an off-air recording system. It has been developed over a number of years, principally for use by the BBC, BUFVC (British Universities Film and Video Council) and the Ministry of Defence.

BoB can capture tens of thousands of hours of television and radio content per year from many channels and distribute that content to many users via the computer’s normal web browser. The system is also said to enable users to search for archived material using a variety of search criteria.

The British Library has around 40,000 titles in its moving image collection. Kristian Jensen, head of British Collections at the British Library, said: 'This project marks the beginning of a far greater role for moving images at the British Library.  It will vastly improve onsite access to the Library’s existing moving image collections.  It will also allow us to expand the archive to include a significant volume of television and radio news programming, enabling us to better meet researchers’ increasing demands for access to multimedia content.  The Library’s moving image collection will increasingly become integrated with other related material, such as the Library’s digital newspaper collections, providing researchers with a unique archive of the UK’s media output.'