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University Library Services

Subject Guide: Social Sciences

This guide brings together library resources for your studies and research. Use these resources alongside your recommended reading from your tutors to extend your research into new areas.

Box of Broadcasts

Man wearing headphones watching a laptop with text - Learning On Screen Whatever You Need Whatever Your Subject BoB's Here For YouBox of Broadcasts (BoB) is an on-demand TV & Radio streaming service for education and research. It contains over 2 million broadcasts from over 65 free-to-air channels including BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and more.  View a complete list of channels.

As well as giving stable, legal access to broadcast content, BoB offers some exciting features for teaching and learning.

  • Links to broadcasts or clips can be embedded into presentations, or embedded into Canvas.
  • Advanced search: It’s possible to search BoB by subject or program as well as by date e.g. it’s possible to see everything broadcast from a date in time.
  • Clips and notes: You can use slider bars on a broadcast to create clips and write annotations on those clips. It’s possible to put these clips into a compilation. No extra software is needed.
  • Playlists: Tutors can create playlists, with annotations, and make these available publicly, to a cohort, or keep them private in a workspace. There are over 80,000 publicly available playlists, and it’s possible to search these by curator, keyword, or institution. Playlists can include programmes, individual broadcasts, clips or clip compilations.
  • Transcripts: BoB also offers transcripts, which would be helpful for accessibility, language comprehension, and quoting for essays. Transcripts are fully searchable by keyword.


How to Login to BoB

You need to log in to BoB with your university ID and password, and then enter your email address and name (one time only) to create an account within BoB. It should work in all internet browsers, but Chrome seems to be working the best at the moment. Due to licensing restrictions, BoB can only be used in the United Kingdom

What can you find on BoB for Social Sciences?

BoB is an excellent source for programmes on TV and radio which include documentaries and series. Here are some playlist on:

You can also find Curated playlists: