BBC Archives

BBC Information and Archives (sometimes known just as BBC Archives) are collections documenting the BBC's broadcasting history, including copies of television and radio broadcasts, internal documents, photographs, online content, sheet music, commercially available music, press cuttings and historic equipment. The original copies of these collections are permanently retained but are now in the process of being digitised, estimated to take until approximately 2015. Some collections are now being uploaded onto the BBC Archives website on BBC Online for viewers to see. The archive is one of the largest broadcast archives in the world with over 12 million items.

The BBC Archives encompass numerous different archives containing different materials produced or acquired by the BBC. The earliest material dates back to 1890 and now consists of 1 million hours of playable material, in addition to documents, photographs and equipment. The archives contain 12 million items on 66 miles of shelving spread over several sites. The stock is managed using a bar code system, which help to locate material on the shelves and also track material that has been lent out. The BBC says that the budget for managing, protecting and digitising the archive accounts for only a small part of the BBC's overall spend.

The BBC is engaging in an ongoing project to digitise archived programme material, converting recordings made on older analogue formats such as audio tape, videotape and film to electronic formats which are compatible with modern computer systems. Much of the audio-visual material was originally recorded on formats which are now obsolete and incompatible with modern broadcast equipment due to the fact that the machines used to reproduce many formats are no longer being manufactured. Additionally, some film and audio formats are slowly disintegrating, and digitisation also serves as a digital preservation programme. As of summer 2010 BBC Archive staff have spent approximately ten years digitising half of the media content and due to improving work practices expect to complete the other half in five years. Current estimates suggest the digitised archive would comprise approximately 52 petabytes of information, with one programme minute of video requiring 1.4 gigabytes of storage. The BBC uses the Material Exchange Format (MXF) which is an uncompressed, non-proprietary format which the BBC has been publicising to mitigate the threat of the format becoming obsolete (as digital formats can and do).

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