British Library and Findmypast announce renewal of long-term partnership
Findmypast and the British Library have announced an extension of their long term partnership; the British Newspaper Archive, along with news that millions more newspaper pages will be digitised over the coming years
Originally launched in 2011, the ten-year project has delivered the most significant mass digitisation of newspapers the UK has ever seen.
The British Newspaper Archive has published more than 42 million pages from over 1,000 regional, national and speciality titles covering all corners of the UK, Ireland and beyond.
Prior to digitisation, this vast cultural treasure was held entirely in hard copy and microfilm, necessitating travel and hours of painstaking manual research for anyone wishing to use the collection.
The announcement will result in the online publication of a further 14 million pages over the next three years, including the addition of 1 million new free-to-access pages each year.
With technology and processes becoming more efficient over time, Findmypast’s digitisation suite at the British Library’s Boston Spa site in West Yorkshire is now digitising the Library’s collection at an unprecedented rate. Since 2019 digitisation has increased dramatically, with over five million pages made available to search online in the past 12 months. Nearly every page is packed with potential genealogy clues, containing an average of 80 names each.
As well as being available online via the British Newspaper Archive and Findmypast, the archive can also be searched for free by users of the British Library’s reading rooms in London and Yorkshire.
An ‘archive of everything’
Originally focused on specific geographic areas, along with periods such as the census years between 1841 and 1911 as well as key events and themes such as the Crimean War, the Boer War and the suffragette movement, the archive has since expanded hugely in scope and scale to form a digital ‘archive of everything’, covering all facets of British and Irish life between 1699 and 2009.
Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library, said: ‘Over the past decade, the British Newspaper Archive has transformed access to the extraordinarily rich collection of historic newspapers in our care. As well as protecting the fragile originals, digitisation has transformed the ways in which researchers can search newspaper content and make connections and discoveries that might never have been possible using print or microfilm.
‘We are delighted to renew our strategic relationship with Findmypast, which has done so much to help expand the online audience for newspapers, whether they are accessing them for research inspiration or enjoyment.’
Watch a behind the scenes video from the newspaper library: http://familytr.ee/newspapers