The Power of the VHS: a BUFVC one-day meeting (UK)

The humble VHS is, rightly, regarded as a disposable commodity and not an archive medium, but the recordings on these cassettes are sometimes unique and irreplaceable. Since 1989 UK Universities and Colleges have created sizeable collections of valuable recordings on VHS. Today however many universities need to reduce storage space and are shifting to other AV carrier media such as DVD or Blu-ray – so what is happening to all those VHS cassettes? This meeting will address these urgent issues and will explore:

• low-cost digitisation and content transfer from VHS
• the creation of a union catalogue for copies of broadcast programmes in educational establishments
• results from the recent BUFVC UK national survey of off-air collections
• proposal for extension of 'shared services' for off-air recording
• online access for programmes retained in educational establishments under licence

The meeting will commence at 10.30 am, 9 December 2009, at BFI Southbank in London and run to no later than 4.00 pm