Introduction by David Allen
At the 2011 AGM we outlined our hopes for developing the BBC History Project in collaboration with the Corporation, and Roly Keating set the context. If the project works, we get recognition for our individual contributions and a chance to feed in our memories of the Corporation's back story in a permanent database. The BBC hopes, of course, to get more useful information about its past and especially its programme and photo archives. If the cuts don't put a stop to it all, then - to use the management jargon - we could have a 'win-win situation'.
Many of you filled in the Working at the BBC questionnaire we sent out with the Christmas Newsletter. Thanks for that if you did. If you didn't, we're still happy to receive replies. We said at the time that this was part of a 'toe in the water' exercise to judge interest and to give us a start. Tony Ageh, Director of the Archive has proposed one electronic 'page' for everyone, from channel controllers and producers to commissionaires and kitchen staff, into which we can pour our personal stories and knowledge.
Both on the questionnaires and at the 2011 AGM there was virtually unanimous endorsement of our general ideas and for our proposal to press forward with it in an experimental way. Designing something flexible, comprehensive, attractive and easy to search is no mean task. So where are we?
This note brings you up to date:
- Our questionnaire gives us initial biographical information about hundreds of our members, albeit on paper. Your replies have been looked at with interest and Nick Whines spoke about the response at the AGM. A good start, but any permanent database will have to be held electronically, so at some stage this information will have to be entered by hand into a computer. By whom and for how much is still an open question.
- Before the 2011 AGM we held a meeting in W12 hosted by BBC Research and Development . A small representative group of our respondents (including people from outside London) met some of Roly Keating's development team. I believe the breadth of experience and knowledge of the ex-staff in the room impressed them. They in turn explained the Genome Project (starting with digitising the Radio Times) and explained that a software 'platform' would need to be built to see in practice how our data might be structured and linked to the Genome 'spine'. They had software in mind but for commercial reasons could not at that time tell us what it was. We are still waiting for an update but the plan is to build a small test database to see in practice what issues the exercise throws up. This would probably involve the people in our pilot group.
- Even if the BBC is slow in getting something to happen we are looking at the possibility of producing a database of our own, at the very least to get our questionnaire results into electronic form but in a way which enables our information to be transferred automatically into the bigger project.
- We have made contact with the Pension Visitors and hope to talk to them at their annual meeting in Cardiff in August. They will be in contact with elderly retired staff who will have valuable stories to tell. But how to capture them before it's too late? But how to handle this data? how to index it? How - in essence - to make it permanently available for posterity? We may try to organise meeting and recording some of these older members' stories as part of the pilot. New technology can use voice recognition software to index audio recordings, which mean that they could be searched for and found once they've been put in to what might end up - over time - being a huge database
- Something as complex as this project may turn out to be will require practical expertise and know-how. Two recently recruited members of the Committee, Tony Byers and George Auckland have been independently involved in capturing work linked to the BBC's past and they are valuable ambassadors for the project . Tony has been making an aural history of BBC Plymouth and George's last act before he retired was to resurrect the 1980's Domesday project - a vast database.
- We are conscious that there are quite a number of ex-BBC staff websites (for example ex-BBC.net and the VT Old boys). There are also groups of ex-staff who meet socially (such as the very active 150 members of the Villers House group I go to myself from BBC Education). We're hoping that any bigger project would be able to co-operate with them and make use of their knowledge and expertise. We like to hear more about these groups or websites and list them or link to them on our own website www.bbcpa.org.uk (managed by another committee member, George Gimber). So if you know of a group that is not listed on our website already, please contact George directly at webmaster@bbcpa.org.uk
As Chairman Mao once said, every journey starts with a single step. So we totter forward with this project as fast as we can, but a lot depends on what happens in the BBC itself as it faces difficult times. Bear with us.