CfSubmissions: TV Archives: Accessing TV History

Critical Studies in Television: Scholarly Studies in Small Screen Fictions

Issue Editors: Lez Cooke and Robin Nelson

* While there has been an excellent response to the call for submissions previously
circulated we would still welcome proposals for articles focusing on ‘small screen
fictions’ (rather than more general institutional issues around archiving and the
problems of accessing TV history) for this special issue of CST. We are therefore
re-circulating this Call for Submissions and welcome further proposals on television
drama and other small screen fictions.

The current research picture would seem to have an upside and a downside for television
researchers. On the upside, digital technologies promise to make archive material
readily accessible to many more people than hitherto. The aims of organisations such as
the BBC and BFI to digitise and disseminate their substantial holdings would appear to
afford great opportunities to researchers. The use historically made by television
scholars of the valuable resources of the BBC Written Archives Centre and the BFI’s
National Film and Television Archive will be considerably extended if digital plans are
realised. However, there is a downside in that the holdings of other archives and
libraries - e.g. regional archives, the film and video libraries of the regional ITV
companies - are often patchy and/or inaccessible. Furthermore, although valuable
research has been done on television history in recent years, it has become increasingly
difficult to get such work into print as publishers focus on books about contemporary
television at the expense of scholarly research into TV history.

In this context, Critical Studies in Television is planning a special issue on
television archives and the opportunities and problems of accessing and publishing TV
history in order to explore these issues. Contributions are welcome on any aspect of
television archives including, but not limited to, the following:

·        The role of national/regional television archives in relation to small screen
fictions

·        Problems of access and availability

·        Case studies relating to particular aspects of archival research

·        The archives/collections of individual writers, directors, producers, etc.

·        Issues around the publication of research on TV history

Contributions are invited on the past, present and future of television archives and
issues of accessing TV history, with particular reference to small screen fictions.
Articles will normally be 4000-6000 words in length, but proposals for shorter or longer
articles will be considered.

Please send an abstract (max. 300 words) to Lez Cooke L.J.Cooke AT mmu.ac.uk or Robin Nelson R.A.Nelson AT mmu.ac.uk by 30 October 2009.

Completed articles will have a submission deadline of 31 March 2010, for publication in Autumn 2010.

www.criticalstudiesintelevision.com

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