2. Streaming – The LRC Perspective
Phyllis McDonald – LRC Manager
Jade Pardy – Systems Librarian
Louise Harris – AV Librarian

3. The Background
• The LRC has been recording off-air broadcasts since the
early 1980s
First on Phillips 2000
Then on VHS
Then onto DVD
• This was done under the ERA licence
• These have been catalogued as part of the LRC and
made available for teaching
• Initially only lecturers were allowed to borrow them
• All borrowers sign to comply with the ERA licence

4. The challenge
• To make our recording more widely and easily available
• To have back up copies in the event of loss or damage

5. Procedure: Selection
• Subject Librarians familiar with the subject areas
• Liaise with lecturing staff

6. Procedure: Recording
• Circulate Radio Times
• Methodical approach - keep track of recordings
Favorites – episodes number/ title
Uploading and deleting
• Noting on the GroupWise Calendar (common to all LRC
staff)

7. Procedure: after recording
• Helix Software – Upload Programmes
• „Latest Links‟ File – Cataloguing
• OPAC

8. Exceptions
• Foreign Language Films – ERA licence
• DVDs Produced before Uploading
• Open University productions

9. What We have Learnt In The Last Year
• Time Consuming – tidying programmes
• Managing the Process – keep track of series, uploading
and deleting programmes
• Good Links with IT Department
• IT Requirements – Library Workspace
• LRC Staff Trained to Lend Support to Role
• Statistics on Usage

10. Staffing implications
PREVIOUSLY
• One AV Technician – distributing DVD/video players
• One Part-time Librarian – capturing the programmes
– cataloguing DVDs at the end of the series

11. Staffing implications
THEN
• One Part-time Librarian
Capturing the programmes
Trimming the programmes
Uploading the programmes
Cataloguing the programmes
• One IT Co-ordinator – encoding and creating the website

12. Staffing implications
NOW
• Systems Librarian – co-ordinating
• A/V Librarian – cataloguing
• Resource Assistant – trimming
• IT Co-ordinator – encoding and creating the website
• IT Assistant – digitising old videos

13. Retrospective digitisation
Key questions:
1. Which videos are worth digitising?
• Quality of the original
• Continuing usefulness of the videos
2. How do we prioritise?
3. How do we keep up with the demand?

14. DVDs
• In the moving to streaming we can no longer provide DVD
versions of programmes
1. Time – we cannot keep hard copies of everything we record!
2. Space – cannot keep recordings for long in their basic format
3. After compression any DVD produced would be for computer
use only
• Commercial DVDs – do we buy streaming rights?

15. Intellectual property
• We cannot stream any commercial video or DVD without
permission (which is frequently denied)
• The copyright of a programme often resides with the
original film company not the “publisher”
• The ERA license does not cover programmes made by
the Open University (even when part of the main stream
broadcast schedule)

16. Some further questions
• Are we recording the right programmes?
More input from lecturing staff needed
• How much are they being used?
Detailed statistics needed
• How long should we keep them?
• How much can we store?
• How do we organise them as the collection gets bigger?