About

Welcome to the Boston TV News Digital Library, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Council on Library and Information Resources. This collaboration between the Boston Public Library, Cambridge Community television, Northeast Historic Film and WGBH Educational Foundation aims to bring to life local news stories produced in and about Boston from the early 1960’s to 2000.

We’ve created an online catalog of news content from Boston Public Library’s WHDH film collection (1960- mid-1970s), Cambridge Community Television (1988 to 1999), Northeast Historic Film’s WCVB film collection (1970-1979), and WGBH-produced The Reporters (1970-1973), Evening Compass (1973-1975) and the Ten O’Clock News. That's almost 50,000 records.

At the start of the project, we asked the public to browse our catalog and vote for the news content they were interested in seeing. Based on those votes and some input from scholars, we digitized over 500 film reels and tapes, which amounts to over 100 hours of historical news footage, which we have streaming for free. We'll be able to continue to digitize on-demand other news stories requested by our viewers, at the discretion of the holding institution.

PBS LearningMedia has created learning objects based on materials in the Boston TV News Digital Library. Check out this collection at http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/bln12/.

The project will also produce a primer on legal issues surrounding access to local news stories. We hope to launch the primer on the website in the near future.