Annabel Colley

Chair Elect of the AUKML

Internet and Information Researcher BBC Panorama

Chairperson elect of the AUKML (Association of UK Media Librarians) Annabel Colley has been Information Researcher at BBC Panorama since 1994, where she works as part of the production team of 40 reporters and producers.

Panorama is the BBC's flagship current affairs programme with an award winning team of reporters investigating numerous topical subjects on prime time television every year. It is the longest running current affairs show on British Television. The programme's definitive and challenging journalism addresses people's concerns on any topical story from home or abroad - often setting the news agenda with its in-depth investigations. Panorama often features exclusive reports, such as the interview with Princess Diana, and CIA spy Aldrich Ames and the recent award winning programme: about the civil strife in Rwanda - Valentina's Story a co production with WGBH. Annabel Colley currently does the Online and Internet research for the team as well as general research and individual training of producers and reporters in Internet research.

She graduated from University of Wales with a masters degree in Information and Library studies in 1988 and joined the BBC Information and Archives department as a Film and VT Librarian. She catalogued film and film researched for BBC producers. She then moved to the BBC Press cuttings library as an Enquiry Assistant.

She has been using commercial databases for TV programme research for 10 years and the Internet for 4. In 1994 she gave a seminar on computer assisted journalism at Panorama at the AUKML (The Association for UK Media Librarians) together with Barbara Semonche of the University of North Carolina. Since then she has been speaking and taking training seminars on using the Internet as a journalistic research tool. She has run courses at the Financial Times, The British Library and ASLIB (The Association for Information Management)

She hopes to soon become more closely involved with the BBC’s major service after TV and Radio, - BBC Online. Where she will be looking at new ways to exploit content on BBC programme web pages.

She lives in North East London with her husband Rupert, a music Librarian and songwriter, and her 16month old son Maxwell.


1998 News Divison Program
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