Good news:
The British Library have today announced:[1]
"Today's the day - one million 19thC newspaper pages free to view (and download) on the British Newspaper Archive. And this is just the start. https://blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/2021/08/free-to-view-online-newspapers.html "
The linked blog post includes a list of titles.
The bad news is that they clarified:[2]
"...Essentially, you need to register to access the free content, but won't be charged anything"
and said in the blog post:
"The fact that we consider newspapers made before 1881 to be in the public domain does not mean that we can [SIC] make all pre-1881 digitised titles available for free"
and that this release represents just 2% of the BNA's digitised newspaper.
Still, a start is a start...;
[1] https://twitter.com/BL_newsroom/status/1424719234815434754
[2] https://twitter.com/BL_newsroom/status/1424730642512809993
Excited to be uploading some PD newspaper covers to Commons... (hopefully we can get BNA back on The Wikipedia Library eventually as well). I've also gone ahead and added it to Wikipedia:List of online newspaper archives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_online_newspaper_archives#United_Kingdom, if anyone wants to rephrase it go ahead. Regards, Berrely
On 09 August 2021 at 20:33 Berrely wikipedia@kaveh.pw wrote: Excited to be uploading some PD newspaper covers to Commons... (hopefully we can get BNA back on The Wikipedia Library eventually as well).
Well indeed. I had BNA access via the Wikipedia Library once, and very useful it was.
The selective quotation from the BL blogpost Andy gave was unhelpful, as far as that is concerned. The BNA is now managed by Findmypast [1] for the BL. The argument that subs are needed to plough back into further and faster digitisation is an obvious one. The counter-argument that some Wikipedia Library accounts might well lead to a net increase in subs is valid (recently I got myself given one, as a birthday present).
Charles
Dear list,
This is generally a good start.
They have clearly marked the free material as Public Domain too.
But there is no facility provided for downloading the free stuff in bulk. And there's too many pages to do one by one.
If anyone can suggest a way of doing so, I'd really be much obliged.
Best,
John
On 09/08/2021 19:25, Andy Mabbett wrote:
Good news:
The British Library have today announced:[1]
"Today's the day - one million 19thC newspaper pages free to view (and download) on the British Newspaper Archive. And this is just the start. https://blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/2021/08/free-to-view-online-newspapers.html "
The linked blog post includes a list of titles.
The bad news is that they clarified:[2]
"...Essentially, you need to register to access the free content, but won't be charged anything"
and said in the blog post:
"The fact that we consider newspapers made before 1881 to be in the public domain does not mean that we can [SIC] make all pre-1881 digitised titles available for free"
and that this release represents just 2% of the BNA's digitised newspaper.
Still, a start is a start...;
[1] https://twitter.com/BL_newsroom/status/1424719234815434754
[2] https://twitter.com/BL_newsroom/status/1424730642512809993
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