Ever wondered what’s in the BBC’s archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there’s a huge database that’s been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary.

This session will explore the work that went into converting that database from an internal green-screen application into a public Web 2.0 site using Ruby on Rails.

Features covered will include ajax, reusable data feeds, schema design for legacy data, and development methodology.