Welcome

Welcome to the Blog associated with the Bournemouth University Centre for Broadcasting History Research’s digital archive projects relating to  early audio from UK Independent Radio. Hopefully you will have visited the “About” page, in which we explain these projects briefly, and direct you to some of our partners and other activities.  As the blog develops we will be adding papers and articles by members of the Centre, as well as some key extracts from the Audio we are working on and some exploration of the processes and experiences as the project proceeds. When complete, the Archive will represent a three part resource, accessible via the British Universities’ Film and Video Council (BUFVC) website. The first part of this – the Felicity Wells Independent Local Radio Programme Sharing Archive (Funded by the AHRC) – is now available. We would suggest that this be viewed as work in progress, as we and our partners intend to refine the searching and indexing of the site. We intend to put a questionnaire on the site, which will enable us to develop and refine this and our other associated site, namely The Wessex South Central ILR collection in which our partner is the Wessex Film and Sound Archive at Hampshire Record Office, Winchester, (another AHRC funded project, due for completion during this summer) and our current major JISC-funded project to digitise and make available online, the LBC/IRN audio archive. this dates from the birth of independent Radio in the UK, the 8 October, 1973, and is the largest commercial radio archive in the UK. this will be complete and online by late Spring/early Summer 2009. The blog will chart our journey towards this goal, and will include items relating to what will be an extraordinary resource for historians of radio as well as social historians and students at every level of learning in the United Kingdom. We will in due course be placing MP3s of some of that material on the blog. We welcome comments to help us in the process of making the projects efficient,user-friendly and as accessible as possible.