Finding television at the British Library

It's not always realised that the British Library has a substantial moving image collection – around 170,000 items. A great many of these are television programmes in digital form and instantly accessible for researchers in our Reading Rooms on any Library computer. All you have to do is find the record on our Explore catalogue, click on 'I Want This', and play. Because of rights issues, we cannot make our television holdings available online offsite, but onsite there is much to discover, of which below is a quick guide.

If you are in a British Library reading at one of our computer, choose your subject through Explore, pick Online: Reading Room only under Access Options, select Moving Images under material type, then at the next page click on I Want This. If an instant access copy is available it will say 'Play this (at British Library only)'

Television news

We have been recording television (and radio) news programmes since May 2010. Currently we record from 22 channels, adding around 50 hours per day. This includes all the main news programmes from the BBC, ITV, Channel and Sky News, plus selected programmes from CNN, Al Jazeera English, RT (Russia Today), France 24, China's CGTN and Nigeria's Channels 24. We make extra recordings of breaking news stories and major stories such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games, general elections and the EU referendum.

We aim to record the same programmes each day, so as well as the main news broadcasts we have good runs of series such as HARDtalk (BBC), Daily Politics (BBC), Listening Post (Al Jazeera), Dispatches (Channel 4), and The Pledge (Sky News). We also record satire shows such as Have I Got News For You (BBC) and News Thing (RT), and just now we're recording many extra programmes relating to the UK general election, including party election broadcasts, debates, speeches (given in full on BBC Parliament) and manifesto launches.

There are currently around 90,00 programmes available, all of them instantly accessible onsite. You can view the programmes within hours after broadcast on our Broadcast News service, available on any British Library terminal, or we upload new programmes to the catalogue at the end of each month.

Our onsite Broadcast News service provides instant access to tens of thousands of news programmes, and a growing number of non-news programmes as well (see the Other Television option, bottom right)

Other television

We have many other television programmes, mostly relating to sound and performance, which we have collected since the 1980s. From 2015 onwards these are all available digitally with instant onsite access. Currently we focus on what are our main moving image collecting areas: current affairs, performance and oral history. We also record programmes relating to other areas of curatorial interest, including wildlife, literary adaptations, and programmes that connect with major exhibitions that we have held (e.g. Magna Carta, Shakespeare).

Programmes you will find include Later with Jools Holland, Storyville documentaries, Arena and Imagine arts documentaries, Gogglebox, Stacey Dooley Investigates, broadcasts from festival such as Glastonbury and Reading, BBC4 music documentaries, Springwatch, Upstart Crow, Wolf Hall, docudramas such as Damilola, Our Loved Boy, all of BBC4's Keith Richards' Lost Weekend, awards ceremonies, the Proms, the Eurovision Song Contest, and much more. If you want to find them all in one place, visit the Broadcast News service, available on any British Library terminal, and click on the 'Other Television' option.

If you want to know more, or have any problems accessing our instant access videos, contact our Listening & Viewing Service. They can also tell you about accessing our analogue TV collection (search for titles on the SAMI catalogue). We're also adding more and more archive video titles, which will need to be the subject of another post. But please remember, we can only offer access onsite, and on British Library terminals, not your own devices.

News story: Prince Harry unveils the UK team for the Invictus Games 2017

Prince Harry joined the 2017 UK team of Wounded, Injured and Sick (WIS) Service personnel and veterans for their first official team photograph at the Tower of London today. Following the unveiling, Prince Harry, who is patron of the Invictus Games Foundation, joined competitors at a reception in Plaisterers Hall.

The Invictus Games harness the power of sport to inspire recovery and generate wider understanding and respect for those who serve their country. Getting involved in sport provides significant physical and mental health benefits including increasing self-confidence and psychological empowerment.

More than 300 WIS personnel and veterans applied for one of 90 places available on the team. Selection criteria included the benefit the Invictus Games will give an individual as part of their recovery, combined with performance and commitment to training. 62% of the team are new to the Invictus Games with only 8% having competed in the two previous games, London 2014 and Orlando 2016.

The UK team will join 16 other nations at the third Invictus Games from 23-30 September in Toronto, Canada. They will compete across 12 sports: athletics, archery, wheelchair basketball, road cycling, powerlifting, indoor rowing, wheelchair rugby, swimming, sitting volleyball, wheelchair tennis, the Jaguar Land Rover Driving Challenge, and a new sport for 2017, golf.

The 2017 UK team captain has been named as former Army Major Bernie Broad. He served in the Grenadier Guards for around 30 years and due to injuries sustained in an explosion in Afghanistan 2009 lost both his legs below the knee.

He said:

The Invictus Games are empowering and inspire all of us as competitors to be the best version of ourselves. It allows us to be judged on what we can achieve, rather than what we can’t.

To simply be selected for the UK Team was an amazing achievement. To then be further selected as the UK Team Captain filled me with such immense pride and it is a huge privilege to be given this honour.

Between now and the Games, training will take place across the country at recovery centres and other external venues to train and develop the team.

The UK delegation to the Invictus Games Toronto 2017 is being delivered by a partnership comprising The Ministry of Defence (MOD), Help for Heroes, and The Royal British Legion.

The full team list can be found on the Help for Heroes website.

Children from B&R countries to celebrate Children’s Day in Beijing

Chinese children were rehearsing one of their programs, Passion for Opera, in Beijing on May 30, for an activity named “Dreams of the Future in B&R Young Hearts -Celebrating International Children’s Day” to be held on May 31 by Beijing-based not-for-profit organization China Soong Ching Ling Foundation. [By Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]

Children from the Belt and Road countries will celebrate the upcoming International Children’s Day in Beijing on May 31.

An activity named “Dreams of the Future in B&R Young Hearts -Celebrating International Children’s Day” will be held by Beijing-based not-for-profit organization China Soong Ching Ling Foundation.

The activity will be attended by about 650 children from 38 countries along the Belt and Road who are currently in Beijing. China-based diplomats from Belt and Road countries and representatives from international organizations such as Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Association of Southeast Asian Nations will also attend the celebration activity.

Children will participate in a series of programs on the morning of May 31, including singing, painting exhibition, robots performance and gifts exchange.

The celebration is intended to promote the consensus reached at the recently concluded Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation and facilitate people-to-people exchange among different countries.

Childcare for the many: Labour’s universal childcare plan will transform the lives of more than a million children

More than a million children and their families will benefit from Labour plans for universal provision of 30 hours of free childcare a week for all two to four-year-olds.

Labour will extend 30-hour childcare to more children by eliminating means testing for two-year-olds and no longer restricting provision for three and four-year-olds to children whose parents are working. This will benefit an additional 1.3 million children.

At the moment, only 40% of two-year-olds qualify for childcare and many working parents with three and four-year-old children are not getting the childcare they were promised by the Conservatives at the last election because of the complexity of the rules. Meanwhile, Tory cuts have also led to the loss of 1,240 Sure Start centres.

Labour’s universal childcare policy will help ensure all children have a good start in life and remove barriers to parents, especially women, participating in the labour market.

Labour’s National Education Service will create a high-quality, universal childcare system that will bridge the gap between maternity leave and full-time schooling in the long run.

Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, said:

“The Labour party believes every child, no matter what their background, deserves a good start in life, and that childcare costs shouldn’t be a barrier for parents who want to go back to work. The current patchy support for childcare is holding back too many families.

“High quality childcare can transform a child’s life chances and make it much easier for parents to work. Labour will roll out 30 hours of free childcare a week to all 2-4 year olds to give all our children the best possible start in life, as part of our plan to build a country for the many, not the few.”

Angela Rayner, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said:

“The Conservatives’ 2015 promise to provide parents 30 free hours of childcare a week has unravelled, as they have failed to give the policy the funding it needs. Too many parents have been let down, unable to go back to work due to the cost of childcare.

“Unlike the Conservatives, Labour will properly fund childcare to help parents get back into work and ensure all children, no matter what their background, have access to the high quality childcare they deserve. The Conservatives are failing to deliver on early years education, there are now over 1,240 fewer designated Sure Start children’s centres than when the Conservatives entered government. It is clear Theresa May and the Conservatives can’t be trusted with our children’s futures.”

Childcare costs represent a significant proportion of family expenditure, with many families made up of two or more children saying it does not make financial sense for both parents to work.

Research by the Family and Childcare Trust revealed that on average British parents are spending almost twice as much on part-time childcare as they do on food per year.

In a survey conducted by the Resolution Foundation and Mumsnet, 67% of mothers in work and 64% of those not working said the high cost of childcare is a barrier to taking on more employment.

Harris Academy FPs’ Lunch

The next Harris Academy Former Pupils’ Association Lunch is on Monday 5th June at 12 noon for 12.30pm.

It will be held in Invercarse Hotel on Perth Road and the cost per person, payable on arrival, will be £16.00.

More information is available from the FPs’ Treasurer Freida Soutar on 562788.

You can read more about the Harris Academy Former Pupils’ Association here.