Tessa Hammond: A day with ITV Local

I’m the Librarian from Thames Valley News and my usual role is controlling the amount of material stored in the news computer in Abingdon and/or researching photographic and archive material for the newsroom journalists.

I asked to come down and visit the team at ITV Local to see how they put the site together and where they get their material from.

I see the advent of online news as an exciting development in the tool-kit of regional news, allowing far more in-depth information relevant to your region, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. The guided tour of the site was truly educational and, I think it presents a very impressive range of information available at the click of the mouse. The time constraints in programming can mean that a lot a great material ends up on the edit-suite floor, but ITV Local's extended packages can use more footage and so make the best use of the reporters' efforts and add significantly to the viewing experience.

For me, it’s been an underused resource until now – but that’s all changed. I can now imagine showing my teenagers where to get the latest info on the gig they want to find.

Not being incredibly “web savvy” I was please to find that I did understand most of what I was being shown. I particularly liked Mark’s introduction to TelvOS – the clothes, suitcase, taxi, analogy was perfect and I’m sure I won’t forget it!

Thank you all for a very interesting and useful day. I look forward to contributing to the site.