The BBC World Service Archive

I’ve been enjoying exploring some of the material in the BBC World Service archive, particularly some of the programmes tagged with “Liverpool”.

I’ve also been improving the archive, by suggesting some better tags for the content as I listen to things. I’m impressed with the level of finish to the project, particularly for an R&D project - the registration system remembered the page I’d been trying to reach when I first registered, rather than just dump me at the homepage once I’d clicked the link in the email; the tagging process is easy as is suggesting more suitable images for the illustration. If I’ve one suggestion from having used it for a bit, it would be to use the user-suggested tags for the image searches (or maybe let the user suggest a search phrase). On this programme about the Anglican Cathedral’s Lady Chapel I had a choice of a number of photos of random cathedrals, or generic shots of Liverpool, and the nearest I could find was one that I knew was a view from the top of the cathedral, whereas presumably at least a shot of the Anglican Cathedral itself would be available (and a better choice). But that’s nit-picking really, it’s a great resource.

Tristan Ferne, from BBC R&D, has published an excellent set of describing how they approached the project. Well worth a read.