Content description
BFI InView is an online resource which offers a unique window on Britain’s changing political, economic and social landscape in the age of film and television. Free to all UK Higher and Further Education users, it makes available some 1,000 hours of non-fiction moving image titles to view or download, alongside 8,000 pages of related documents.
Carefully selected from the BFI National Archive together with help from its content partner institutions, InView’s collections capture diverse perspectives on events, developments and debates through the 20th and into the 21st century.
Main subject areas
Humanities, including History, Politics, Sociology, Economics, Geography, Planning, Media Studies, Film Studies.
Academic level
Undergraduate and postgraduate
Date range
1920-2005.
Updates
There are no planned updates.
Publisher's selection policy
Broad selection criteria were tested with members of the higher and further education community and the project’s advisory group, which comprised a number of subject specialists.
The project adopted a broadly thematic approach to help guide selection. The themes were sufficiently general to aid rather than to inhibit selection of moving image assets. The scope ranged from the silent cinema era through to the present day. The themes were as follows:
- Education
- Industry / Economy
- Health
- Law and Order
- Environment
- Immigration, Race and Equality
In addition, material was selected according to these additional criteria:
- Whole films / videos, not extracts: Every title selected was digitised in its entirety and not as selected extracts
- Copyright: Material was selected for digitisation only if the copyright was owned by one of the project’s content partners, since the project did not possess sufficient resources to enable material under other copyright ownership to be cleared
Comparable resources
Newsfilm Online, Film & Sound Online.
Cost
BFI InView is a free resource, with only a peppercorn payable by subscribers, if demanded.
Subscription
To access the sub-licence, and for instructions on how to subscribe, please see the subscription page.
The agreement will run until 31st August 2014.
Functionality and standards compliance
Full text linking
Not applicable.
Federated searching
z39.50 not supported.
MARC records
Not applicable.
Metadata standards
Fields provided: Title, Series Title, Year, Duration, Theme(s), Collection(s), Synopsis, Context, plus other filmographic fields depending on availability.
Partial compliance with Dublin Core, MODS and CEN/BT/TF 179.
Search options
Basic Search: free text search across all metadata fields.
Advanced Search: multiple free text fields combined by Boolean operators, optionally filtered by year range.
Further advice on searching is available from: http://www.bfi.org.uk/inview/help/search-tips.
Post-search options
No support for saving or exporting searches at this time.
Usage statistics
No usage statistics available.
Authentication
Authentication is via the UK Access Management Federation (HE and FE only).
Personalisation of the online resource
No personalisation features at this time.
Accessibility
WCAG 2.0 conformance level 'A', Section 508 (US) compliant
Library support information