The British Film Institute Brings Together its Comprehensive Collection of Film and British Television Data Into New Website

The British Film Institute Brings Together its Comprehensive Collection of Film and British Television Data Into New Website

LONDON, October 3/PRNewswire/ -- Sigmer Technologies today announced it has developed a comprehensive
database solution and framework for the BFI's collection of filmographic
data, including world cinema, film and television, onto a new searchable film
and television website. As the custodian of one of the largest national film
and television archives in the world, the BFI presented Sigmer with the
challenge of developing the database, creating the search functionality to
query the database and hosting the new website.

Besides the huge scale of the information to be transferred - over
810,000 British and international film and television titles, 1.2 million
actors, directors, producers and film and TV professionals, biographies and
filmographies - Sigmer was also tasked with creating a search engine that
would generate the appropriate search results for the different types of
users, including members of the public, film fans, academics and industry
experts. Sigmer drew on its usability testing and search engine development
expertise to ensure that the database and search functionality of the BFI
site had the flexibility to deal with the many different types of users'
requests.

The Sigmer team has over 30 years collective experience in working with
LAMP technologies. One of the BFI's main requirements for the new database
was to work with an open source platform. To add further flexibility to the
system, Sigmer has created a new web service utilising the SOAP XML standard,
which will allow syndicated content from the BFI to be effortlessly
integrated and displayed on third party websites.

Margaret Luck, BFI Database Project Manager, says, "The BFI has been
collecting information since 1933 which has been available on databases
accessible only by BFI staff and Library users. It has been an enormous
achievement to transfer all this disparate data onto a single platform.
Sigmer's search functionality and LAMP technology-based database architecture
ensures our new Film and TV Database is now available to all via our website.
Whether a serious film researcher or a member of the public with a general
interest in film is visiting the site, Sigmer's solution means that they will
not only be able to find the relevant information on their subject of choice,
but also view the search results according to their particular area of
interest."

More information about Sigmer Technologies can be found at
www.sigmer.com.

Source: Sigmer Technologies

Contact: Tara Mun - +44(0)870-870-8735

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