Monday, October 31, 2005
hackdiary: The BBC's programme catalogue (on Rails)
hackdiary: The BBC's programme catalogue (on Rails): "'The BBC plans to open up its archive to make a treasure trove of material available to everyone.' - BBC Press Release, August 2003
Ever wondered what's in that archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there's a huge database that's been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary.
I'm the lucky developer who gets to turn this hidden treasure into a public website. No programme downloads yet, but a massive searchable programme catalogue.
In the early part of next year, you can look forward to a public beta with extensive programme details and broadcast histories. There are 'On This Day' schedules that go back to 1933. It's got full contributor histories, and Really Good Search. I can't begin to describe the depth of this dataset - it had an entry for the one time in the 1990s when my dad was on local TV news as a spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council. The cataloguers have worked hard on this stuff for years, and it deserves a wide audience."
Ever wondered what's in that archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there's a huge database that's been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary.
I'm the lucky developer who gets to turn this hidden treasure into a public website. No programme downloads yet, but a massive searchable programme catalogue.
In the early part of next year, you can look forward to a public beta with extensive programme details and broadcast histories. There are 'On This Day' schedules that go back to 1933. It's got full contributor histories, and Really Good Search. I can't begin to describe the depth of this dataset - it had an entry for the one time in the 1990s when my dad was on local TV news as a spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council. The cataloguers have worked hard on this stuff for years, and it deserves a wide audience."
