Celebrating the one-year anniversary of its London launch at the new BFI Southbank, the British Film Institute has revealed that it plans to open two new UK mediatheques by December 2008.

The first will be at QUAD, Derby's new $20m (£10m) centre for art and film, and the second in Cambridge at the redeveloped Library Central. Each will offer public access to a large selection of National Archive footage.

Amanda Nevill, director of the BFI, said: 'When we opened the first Mediatheque at BFI Southbank exactly a year ago we always said we wanted to create opportunities to make archive film more widely and easily available to people living outside London. Now, with two Mediatheques due to open by the end of the year in the East Midlands and in Cambridgeshire, we are a step closer to opening up the BFI National Archive to everyone across the UK. We look forward to setting up similar partnership initiatives in other regions.'

Keith Jeffrey, director of QUAD added: 'QUAD is very excited to be the first partner BFI Mediatheque. The Mediatheque at BFI Southbank has been a great success attracting thousands of visitors and invigorating an appetite for archive film and television. We're delighted to pioneer this fantastic digital jukebox in the East Midlands.'

Cambridgeshire County Councillor Martin Curtis, added: 'Cambridgeshire is delighted to host one of the first regional partner Mediatheques. It will be a great addition to Library Central and is an exciting project that fits perfectly with our vision of what is needed in a modern Library in a major centre for academia.'

The BFI Southbank mediatheque has welcomed more than 29,000 visitors since it was opened and now offers more than 800 hours worth of material and over 1,000 different titles. Popular offerings in the first year range from a 1905 film of a baby's bath to Saul Dibb's 2004 drama Bullet Boy.

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