It was just announced that the BBC is launching a digital archive of The Listener, its radio magazine that ran from 1929 to 1991.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/31/bbc-online-archive-the-listener-magazine
The Listener not only published the BBC’s programming schedule and promoted upcoming radio content, but featured many writers from the Bloomsbury Set such as Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and T.S. Eliot. It was also at the forefront of the popular science industry, explaining and promoting theories such as Einstein’s relativity, quantum mechanics, and wave-particle duality to a generally educated audience. The Listener, along with BBC pamphlets and other related ephemera, not to mention the BBC’s signal itself, had a wide reach into the European continent and had a broad impact on discourses in all areas of culture, both mainstream and avant-garde.
This resource will make it much easier to study the history and culture of the 1920s and 1930s, and beyond.
So how (4 May 2012) can this be accessed? Only through an institution rich enough to pay a sub to Gale Inc (they won’t say how much, but they will as good as say that British public libraries are ruled out – which probably means a good few universities as well). Breach of BBC Charter?