British Library sprinkles digital dust on dusty newsprint

The British Library and its commercial partner brightsolid opened up a pay-per-view online archive of newspapers today, after a crack team scanned 4 million searchable pages that mainly date from out-of-copyright papers published in the 19th century.

It was confirmed in May 2010 that the British Library and brightsolid — which is a division of FriendsReunited and Beano owner DC Thomson – would eventually digitise 40 million pages of old newspapers.

The library holds 52,000 national and international titles covering 300 years. Up until now, around 30,000 researchers a year have to go to Colindale in north London to scan through microfilm or hard copies — via redwolf.newsvine.com