WAC wrong-headedness
John Wyver writes: Some of you will know that I have been very involved over the past months with attempts to reverse the wrong-headed changes to access at the BBC Written Archives Centre (above, with thanks to Ian Greaves for the photo). This is an ongoing campaign, and I thought it might be useful here to outline its progress with a clutch of links. The following will hopefully give you a sense of why this is so important for independent research into not only broadcasting history but the social, political and cultural histories of Britain and the empire across the past century.
The core of the concerns of now more than 550 researchers, academics and story-tellers is expressed in the open letter that was the first public expression of what by then had already been extensive – and fruitless- exchanges with BBC executives.
The story was picked up in Vanessa Thorpe’s accurate and fair-minded Observer article, which can be found here.
I developed some of the core arguments in an interview with Roger Bolton for his Beebwatch podcast, and in a post for The Conversation, which also features an official response by the BBC.
And Critical Studies In Television online has been running an excellent series of blog posts about different aspects of the significance of WAC, and why retaining independent access to its riches is so important:
Defending the WAC: Recovering the invisible women of the by Kate Murphy
Defending the WAC: All the things I haven’t (yet) written by Helen Wheatley
Defending the WAC: ‘Bigger on the Inside’ Doctor Who Archives by Toby Hadoke
Defending the WAC: Mark Lewisohn looks at why renewed appreciation is urgently required
… and the most recent, published today:
Defending the WAC: Filling the gaps which some never knew existed by James Jordan
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