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Saturday, October 10, 2009

Digitized British Newspapers 1800 to 1900

The British Library sponsors a number of huge online resources including digitized copies of the British Newspapers from 1800 to 1900. This mostly subscription Website contains, to quote the site:
  • Millions of articles from 49 London, national and regional newspaper (1800 - 1900) titles.
  • Over two million pages - all fully text searchable with keywords in context visible in the results list.
  • 1000's of illustrations, maps, tables and photographs.
To access the millions of articles in this database, you will need to first register as a user and then purchase either:
  • A 24-hour pass for £6.99 that provides you access to 100 articles over that period.
  • A 7-day pass for £9.99 that provides you access to 200 articles over that period.
"The digitised nineteenth century British Library newspapers are freely available for people in UK higher and further education, in some UK public libraries, and in some institutions in other countries. Please contact your library to find out about access." See Welcome to British Newspapers Online.

It is pretty obvious that British English spells digitized with an "s." Also, it appears that £6.99 is about $11.18 U.S. dollars, so £9.99 is about $15.97. It seems that you would need a reasonably focused research goal to support that kind of cost. This is especially true, for me, since I can look at 100 articles in a matter of an hour or so, especially if I am getting a lot of negative results.
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1 comment:

  1. M. Diane RogersOctober 10, 2009 at 6:43 AM

    On a little more positive note, Gale's 'British Newspapers 1800-1860' database (which is excellent for those researching in the places covered) used to be available only through the British Library or through selected sites in the UK (for free) or through larger libraries in the UK or the rest of the world who paid for this database service. It's only recently that Gale has offered individual subscriptions. These benefit those of us without access otherwise. And, usually for Library Week in the USA (April), Gale gives free access to some of its databases.

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