Information Technology and Libraries: British Library announced a major development for newspapers digitized from its own collections

The British Library announced a major development for newspapers digitized from its own collections.

One million pages on the British Newspaper Archive site have become free to view. These one million pages will be followed by one million more each year for the next four years, creating a substantial free historical newspaper resource that should greatly expand the use of and understanding of historical newspapers.

This has been made possible through a new partnership agreement between the British Library and Findmypast, the company which manages the British Newspaper Archive. The BNA has over 44 million newspaper pages, mostly British and Irish titles, ranging from 1699 to 2009, or just under 10 per cent of all newspapers held by the British Library. The BNA is a subscription site, the payment made by users helping to digitize and preserve yet more newspapers.

There are 158 titles on offer, ranging from 1720 to 1880. The latter date is significant. All of the newspapers that make up the ‘free to view’ offer are out-of-copyright. The British Library keeps to a ‘safe date’ when determining when a newspaper can be considered to be entirely out-of-copyright, which is 140 years after the date of publication.

The newspapers selected come from four British Library projects, plus some selected by Findmypast themselves.

●       XIX Century Newspapers was a project funded by the Joint Information Systems. Committee over 2004-09, the British Library's first major newspaper digitization program.

●       Heritage Made Digital newspapers is an ongoing digitization project focusing on newspapers in poor or unfit condition.

●       Living with Machines is an ongoing research project, jointly led by the British Library and the Alan Turing Institute, which has been digitizing selected UK regional newspapers as part of a major study of the British industrial age, using artificial intelligence tools to undertake new kinds of historical enquiry.

●       The Endangered Archives Programme facilitates the digitization of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration.