Responsibility for preserving and providing access to moving image and sound in the United Kingdom is distributed among a number of national organisations.
Digital collections listed here are available from the Alphabetical list of databases available via the Brightspace Library tab or our Library webpages. These collections focus on news, newsreels and documentary footage.
UK 'free-to-air' Broadcasters provide access to programmes from their websites, usually for up to seven days after broadcast.
British universities record broadcast material off-air under licence, plus many broadcasters now offer on demand facilities.
Post broadcast, it remains difficult to obtain copies of television and radio programmes. Through our membership of the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) we can request a limited number of items from their Off-Air Recordings Service for items missed in the current year.
In addition we have access to the BUFVC’s Off-Air Recording Collection from 1998-2006. Requests can be made by individual researchers for recordings from the collection via the Library.
For programmes post-2007 please refer to Box of Broadcasts (BoB National), see below.
To find out what has been broadcast or what will be broadcast in the coming two weeks, consult the Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching (TRILT) website.