The BBC Domesday Rescue Project

Speaker: Jeffrey Darlington

18th May 2005 , 2pm , Devonshire G21/G22 Conference Room

Abstract

A collaborative project managed by The National Archives has rescued the unique data resource created by the BBC Domesday Project of 1986 from its obsolete videodisc storage medium, and its dependence on the obsolete BBC Micro computer. As this is an interactive multi-media data resource, the issues raised and problems solved are of great interest to all those concerned with preserving digital objects and tracking the history of the computer age. The talk compares several parallel rescue projects, each taking a different approach. After graduating from Cambridge, Mr Darlington worked in the UK computing industry for 30 years, designing business applications and databases. He lectures in Information Systems at the University of West of England and was a consultant to the Open University course ‘Relational Databases’

Mr Darlington joined the National Archives in 1998 and helped to set up and run the Digital Preservation Department from 2001 until his retirement last year. He was the Contract Manager for the UK National Digital Archive of Datasets and Project Manager for the BBC Domesday Rescue Project.