UK's newspaper collection to go online
Jinfo Blog

21st May 2010

By Penny Crossland

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The largest collection of newspapers in the world is about to be digitised. The British Library’s announcement this week (http://digbig.com/5bbqbq) that it was embarking on a huge project to make up to 40 million newspaper pages available online, comes as welcome news to those who have had to scroll through rolls and rolls of microfilm at the Colindale Library in north London. In partnership with online publisher Brightsolid – owners of findmypast.co.uk and genesreunited.co.uk – the project will focus on stories documenting historical events in the 19th century, such as the Boer War and the Crimean War, and aims to digitize around four million pages in the first two years. The newspaper collection spans three centuries and includes around 52,000 regional, local and national publications. As David Fordham, President of the Newspaper Society said, the British Library’s venture “represents a particularly exciting opportunity for regional newspapers, which have a long and rich heritage and capture changing times in local and regional areas across the centuries”. But what of other similar ventures? Google launched its own digital news archive in September 2008 ( go to http://www.vivavip.com/go/e22692 for details), and with more than four million articles from 100 titles in its database, claims to be the largest and most comprehensive historical news archive on the web. There is a bias towards US publications – coverage includes the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post - , however there are also digital copies of Le Monde available, for example. Since Google News Archives uses the Google interface, searches can be refined by date, language or source. Google’s knowledge sharing site, Knol (http://knol.google.com) has a useful overview of online newspaper archives,( http://digbig.com/5bbqbs) which includes links to newspaper and magazine archive directories from more than 25 countries. For a comprehensive list of digital conversion projects from Afghanistan to the United States , via Mongolia, visit the International Coalition on Newspapers web site (http://digbig.com/5bbqbt).

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