About the BBC Monitoring Library

About BBC Monitoring

We are who you come to for a level of insight others cannot provide. The combination of our expertise, ability to identify relevant sources, our regional knowledge and presence on the ground ensures we deliver the most unrivalled insight into world media.

We are proud to be part of the BBC Global News Division, providing our customers with 70 years of expertise and sharing the benefits of our extensive partnership network.

We offer our customers a unique service and:

• Identify the relevant and influential sources to monitor

• Have access to the most inaccessible sources

• Our advanced technology infrastructure ensures quality assurance

• Explain the context and highlight the significance of issues relevant to you

• Go beyond text translation, identifying nuances in dialect and vernacular

A number of its unique capabilities are still valued, such as our focus on open sources - specifically a wide range of broadcasts and news agency transmissions; our ability to provide "the words as spoken" - accurate and impartial translations of what happened, plus understanding how the media reported an event.

We have changed and developed as the media has, with short wave radio, media regulations, FM radio, satellite TV, the internet and the exploitation of the media for propaganda and extremist views.

Our heritage has provided us with long standing expertise and media presence and we continue to develop with the world around us.

Recent Trends

Recent changes in world affairs have opened up new markets and new challenges for governments and businesses. The fall of Communism fundamentally altered power relationships and radically changed the nature of many nations and societies. These political changes unleashed more fluid, volatile and unstable forces, significantly increasing the need for up to date and accurate information.

BBC Monitoring has taken up these challenges by opening new bases and using ever more sophisticated technology to cover and deliver new and more varied sources of information - to continue to provide the latest and most reliable news.

BBC Monitoring Library provides you with

• Reporting on political and economic events around the world that impact

Internal affairs	Proliferation	Human rights
International relations	Crime	Energy
Environment	Health	Media
Migration	Military	Narcotics
Peacekeeping	Terrorism	Telecoms

• Reliable, deep, on the ground insight in key locations

• Understanding around local nuances

• Timely information

• Quality human translation, ensuring accurate regional understanding

• Constant monitoring of relevant and trusted sources

• 70 years of expertise and understanding

• A resource you can rely on, being an integral part of the trusted BBC brand heritage

Comprehensive content sourcing, authoritative selection, flexible delivery

More than 3,000 radio, television, press, internet and news agency sources in over 150 countries are monitored to inform the BBC's distinctive, authoritative and reliable reporting of political and economic news.

Articles are selected from traditional and new media worldwide, with over one hundred source languages being translated into English to provide a fully searchable digital current affairs resource.

Content is delivered via data feed to the new web platform, where XML-based storage enables greater flexibility in delivery. The database also supports sophisticated discoverability, including multiple filtering options to facilitate user's ability to track emerging stories.

State-of-the-art features for institutional subscribers

• access control by IP-authentication

• management of complex intersubscriber relationships

• social bookmarking

• COUNTER-compliant usage statistics

• RSS feeds

Licensing and e-commerce

The site benefits from a fully-integrated subscription management system, which supports flexible content licensing, complex customer relationships and multiple currencies.