SUNDAY 16 DECEMBER, 2018 – UWI TODAY
15
70
th
ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE
ACQUISITION
– ISSUE ARCHIVE JANUARY 2012
Excitement abounded among
the four Campus Librarians
of our regional institution, who coincidentally were all
together in Jamaica for UWI Cross-Campus meetings in
early February 2011 when we received word from the Vice
Chancellor, Professor E. Nigel Harris that The UWI was
being offered the Archive of BBC Caribbean programmes
for the period 1988-2011, in view of the imminent closure
of the BBC Caribbean Service on March 25, 2011.
Debbie Ransome, veteran broadcaster from Trinidad
and Tobago and Head of the BBC, Caribbean Service had
made this generous offer, recognizing that UWI was indeed
the most suitable regional organization to preserve and
make the files available for research for all of the Caribbean.
As University and Campus Librarian, the task was
entrusted to me to manage the process of the transfer of
this important and rich archive to The UWI.
The Head of the Information Technology Services at
the Alma Jordan Library, Frank Soodeen, went immediately
to London in the second week of March to consult with the
BBC technicians and to manage the process of download
and transfer before the actual closure of the offices. His
visit was followed by that of Claudia de Four, Deputy
Campus Librarian who, with Ransome and Roanna Gopaul,
counsellor at the Trinidad and Tobago High Commission
in London, ensured the on time completion of the file
transfer and safe delivery of the digital files to the Alma
Jordan Library.
There followedmonths of anticipation and preparation
as the University Counsel, Dr. Beverley Pereira liaised with
the BBC to arrive at a mutually agreeable Legal Deposit
Agreement which was eventually signed by the relevant
parties. In the Agreement, the UWI undertakes to preserve
the BBC Caribbean Service archive, make it accessible to
UWI stakeholders and bona fide researchers and develop
an index to the collection.
The initial February 8, 2011 acceptance culminated in
an official handover ceremony that took place onNovember
4, 2011 at theMona Campus, where the originals will reside.
At that ceremony, Professor Harris noted that “a
university is not only about education and research, but a
university is a repository of a civilisation’s history.”
He expressed his gratitude to the BBC for choosing the
UWI as the institution to preserve and make accessible this
rich resource of major news stories and current affairs to
researchers and the Caribbean at large.
The library staff at St. Augustine has been leading the
project to transfer the historic material to a digital platform
that researchers could use to find the various stories. The
process involves the digitization of the recordings into
formats that can be streamed over the Internet, and also
in formats that will ensure the long term preservation of
the original content. The Librarians will be indexing each
recording to allow users of the resource to get an immediate
sense of the contents of a programme before actually
listening to it.
In total, theUWI received 3,000 hours of audio covering
12,000 15-minute programmes of the BBC daily Caribbean
news. These programmes tell the story of the happenings in
the Caribbean for the years spanning 1988 to 2011. There
are the stories and details of the hurricanes and how they
affected us, that fateful earthquake in Haiti that occurred in
January 2010 and a myriad of other events in our history.
Mr Soodeen has indicated that the material also covers
Debbie Ransome, Head of the BBC Caribbean Service, poses with the archived material from 1988-2011 she had just presented to The UWI
with Professor Wainbinte Wariboka, acting Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Mona Campus, Jennifer Joseph, University and St.
Augustine Campus Librarian and Vice Chancellor, Professor E. Nigel Harris.
BBCCaribbeanArchives find aHome
UWI gets 23 Years of Recordings
the attempted coup in Trinidad and Tobago, the death of
leaders such as Michael Manley, and Cheddi Jagan, the
Allen Stanford saga and the CLICO financial issues. It also
contains a number of special programmes aired by the BBC
Caribbean Service, including a series on the use of drugs
by Caribbean youth, a tribute to the Jamaican cultural icon,
Miss Lou, an analysis of Caricom, and a look at the lives of
Caribbean war veterans living in the UK.
The Librarians at UWI have many hours and, I daresay,
Jennifer Joseph
is University and Campus Librarian at The UWI.
B Y J E N N I F E R J O S E P H
years of work ahead of us as we build an index that would
identify each news report, each news clip, the speakers,
etc. so that researchers can find that special story that is of
importance to them. This work will be done by librarians
at our campuses in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and
Tobago. Hopefully, in about three years’ time, with the
appointment of staff to this project, all the material would
be available for use.
“In total, the UWI received 3,000 hours of audio
covering 12,000 15-minute programmes of the
BBC daily Caribbean news. These programmes
tell the story of the happenings in the Caribbean
for the years spanning 1988 to 2011.”
