BoB National – the online TV and radio streaming service for universities and colleges - is a big success
Cambridge, July 2010
www.boxofbroadcasts.com
www.bobnational.net
Over 14,500 staff and students from more than 20 UK universities and colleges now share BoB National - the Box of Broadcasts - which delivers post-transmission access to thousands of TV and radio programmes, as well as over 30,000 archived programmes.
BoB delivers an online off-air recording and archive access facility for bona fide staff and students of universities and colleges, allowing users to capture and watch, or listen, to free-to-air radio or television programmes transmitted during the previous seven days. However, unlike other ‘see-it-again’ services, as soon as programmes are captured, the copies remain accessible online indefinitely for access by all authorised users in the UK.
Any students or members of staff in licensed institutions can select programmes to record and then create playlists to share, or clips to include in their own work. In the last year, users watched over 360,000 programmes and clips.
Students whose courses focus on current affairs or history, for instance, may find and store valuable factual content from both television and radio, while those studying performing arts or media can access high quality recordings and extracts of performances which might not otherwise be available post-transmission. Sports science students can likewise store many hours of simultaneously transmitted match play for later analysis.
BoB National operates in the UK via a standard web browser under secure authentication, and is simple to use.
Launched nationally in March 2009, BoB National is a result of a partnership between the British Universities Film & Video Council, Cambridge Imaging Systems and Bournemouth University and is designed to serve licensed education establishments in the UK.
Professor Barry Richards, Head of Media Research at Bournemouth University said:
“BoB is definitely the iPlayer for higher education and it’s the obvious tool for broadcast media researchers to use. The BoB archive is becoming invaluable.”
Ian Mottashed of Cambridge Imaging Systems said:
“We are delighted that BoB is being taken up by universities across the UK, from Edinburgh to Portsmouth, Kent to St Andrews. The wonderful thing about BoB National is that the more it’s used the more useful it becomes.”
Luís Carrasqueiro, Deputy Chief Executive of BUFVC stated:
“Institutions that use BoB are able to easily provide access to high quality content to their students while diverting resources from the back office to frontline support of learners; BoB National enables more creative and efficient services from the classroom to the library.”
Media Contact: John Foster +44 (0)1473 652195 mediamatters@mac.com
Notes for editors:
In addition to universities accessing BoB National, organisations that use their own BoB enterprise system, developed and supplied by Cambridge Imaging Systems, include the British Library, the National Library of Wales and the Ministry of Defence.
The British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) is a representative body which promotes the production, study and use of moving image, sound and related media in higher education and research. The Council is a related body of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and receives part funding as grant via the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). www.bufvc.ac.uk
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