Two centuries of British news now on the Internet
By ANIThursday, June 18, 2009
LONDON - British newspapers more than 200 years old are now available online, thanks to a new Internet service from the country’s national library.
Visitors can view news more than two million pages of newspapers dated as early as 1800 from 49 national and regional titles.
The new service from the British Library offers free searches for free while full-text articles can be downloaded by purchasing either a 24-hour or seven-day pass at 6.99 and 9.99 pounds respectively.
“The new pay-as-you-go service will enable users across the UK who don’t wish to travel to our reading rooms in London or Yorkshire to delve into this unrivalled online resource,” Sky News quoted Simon Bell, from the British Library
Simon Fowler, editor of Ancestors Magazine, also said: “This new service really does open up a major new resource for family historians.
“Realistically, for the first time it is possible to use newspapers to complement other records to build up a rounder portrait of our ancestors, with information that would not be possible to obtain elsewhere.”
The British Library partnered with the Joint Information Systems Committee and Gale, part of Cengage Learning, to come up with the service. (ANI)
