BBC Monitoring - Digitisation of Summary of World Broadcasts Collection

Since 1939, the BBC Monitoring Service has been listening to broadcasts from across the world and transcribing them. In the run up to the Second World War, until March, 2001, BBC Monitoring published Summary of World Broadcasts (SWBs). These summaries contain edited reports of material disseminated on radio, wireless telegraph and later television and the internet. The reports are on microfilm and microfiche for the period 1939-1990 and in hard/paper copy from 1990-2001 BBC Monitoring is seeking a commercial partner who is able to take on the digitisation of the content from different formats, building of an interface and hosting of the digitised content, as well as its sales, marketing and distribution, on a revenue-share basis.

Initial market research indicates total revenues of several million $/£ within the initial term of 7 years, and metadata- and redigitising costs borne by the bidder of several hundred-thousand.