Hammersley & the BBC Archive

(Florentine Street Sceen. Photograph, Ben Hammersley)










Wandering the Web you come across some interesting things.

Ben Hammersley is one of the better writer | journo | hackers and has given good thought on blogging & the Semantic Web (as well as dry laughs and some nice pictures).

Ben is working on a project to organize the BBC archive with Matt Biddulph.

Matt, who is doing the real work, explains it best:

'Ever wondered what’s in that archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there’s a huge database that’s been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary. I’m the lucky developer who gets to turn this hidden treasure into a public website. No programme downloads yet, but a massive searchable programme catalogue.'

Think IMDB for the BBC, only bigger. And made by funky bastards with a penchant for structured data.

This is when you start re-thinking everything you ever believed about content, its value and The Long Tail.