The British Universities Film and Video Council has a proven track record in delivering high-quality and contextualised digital resources. Their News On Screen is the leading resource for the study of newsfilm and cinemagazines documenting British newsfilm production, scripts, and images from 1910-1983. They have a Moving Image Gateway with links to over 1,000 sites relating to moving images and sound material. And an international database of Shakespeare on film, video and radio. All with user-friendly search screens and displays.

Their latest project, Film and the Historian, explores the work of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium founded in 1968 by John Grenville and Nicholas Pronay. The IUHF produced 16 films (between 1969 and 1999) with accompanying booklets by historians. The films used newsfilm of the period and covered such topics as the Spanish Civil War (with notes by Paul Addison and Owen Dudley Edwards), fascism, the Great Depression: as well as politicians such as Stanley Baldwin (with notes by John Ramsden) and Neville Chamberlain (with notes by David Dilks). The films come with a useful “How to Cite” note acknowledging that the citing of online resources can be more problematic.

Not only are the films available, along with the original notes (to subscribing institutions) but a plethora of contextual material is also available. Under Primary Sources original documents outline the formation of the consortium and the role of the film and history movement in the 1970s, with papers by various curators, researchers and historians. There are also histories of the consortium, one from the executive secretary of the IUHFC, Peter Bell, and one from film historian James Chapman.

Additionally, and with an eye to the practical means of delivering digital resources, the site offers a series of articles by the project team outlining the processes involved in the selection, digitisation and publication of the primary sources and moving images for an academic audience.