British Library launches 10-year newspaper digitisation project

Posted by Erina Lin on May 19, 2010 at 1:00 PM

The British Library announced a partnership with online publisher brightsolid to digitise up to 40 million newspaper pages from its at Colindale archives, and make them online accessible, according to Culture 24.

This will includes 52,000 local, regional, national and international titles since up to the last three centuries.

The 10-year project will cover minimum of 4 million pages over the first two years. As Over the course of ten years, as the mass digitisation process becomes more efficient and as in-copyright content is scanned following negotiations needed, it aims to finish 40 million pages.

The library will mainly focus on digitising papers which document historical events in the 19^th century, including the Crimean War, the Boer War and the suffragette movement, Media Guardian reported.

"This will be the largest mass digitisation of historic newspapers the UK has ever seen," said library spokesman Ben Sanderson.

"It will help the newspaper collection to remain relevant for a new generation of researchers, more used to accessing research information via their laptop than travelling to a physical location," said the British Library's chief executive, Dame Lynne Brindley, according to the Press Association article posted on Google News.