17 ms·

The British Library puts 1M newspaper pages online for free

324 points by aries1980 5y ago

cube00 5y ago
> The British Library keeps to a ‘safe date’ when determining when a newspaper can be considered to be entirely out-of-copyright, which is 140 years after the date of publication. It's depressing that copyright has been extended so far it's now longer then any single individual's possible lifetime.
- Zenst 5y ago
  Wasn't it Disney and other media companies that pushed copyright duration towards this 140 year value? I vaguely recall that as a driving factor though maybe wrong and one of those unproven theories or meme'd news of times past. Be ironic (A children focused company like Disney pushing thru a change in law that actually in the end harms the children as it limits their access for their lifetime into copyright servitude that shows little thought for the children) if was as would sure add a whole new spin to the "think of the children" sound-bite often used to push thru some change in law/rules. Still, somewhat sad. More so as we build building today too a standard that is not that long-standing in years by design.
  - fredoralive 5y ago
    AFAIK the 140 year is just an arbitary value the British Library have used, it isn't part of copyright law. The UK has used a life + X[1] years system since the 1840s[2]. I guess they assume 140 years is enough to ensure any unknown / untracable authors have been dead for long enough for a work to be near unquestionably in the public domain. [1] Where X has steadily increased with each copyright law revision. [2] The US was a weird outlier on this for a long time after most of the world settled on this system.
- Ovah 5y ago
  The National library of Sweden has a similar website but for newspapers printed in Sweden. They write "Copyright protection is valid for 115 years on the day. The free material is moved forward by one day every day." I get that likes such as Disney has an interest in extending it. Maybe a middle ground could be the ability to apply for extensions of individual works instead of a universal blanket extension? This long period really hampers my ability to do research on 1700s literature - a lot of such research was done in the early 1900s. But that content, even if it's 100 years old, just isn't indexed anywhere (e.g. Google books) due to copyright even if it is already digitized. https://tidningar.kb.se https://tidningar.kb.se
- dalbasal 5y ago
  This needs to change, big time. There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake. Not only are creators of valuable works is usually pretty distant from direct ownership anyway, there's no possible way for them to profit directly from this work. The only way a spotify-like deal works is because copyright ownership is conglomerated. IMO, public (especially free-as-in-beer) access to newspaper archives could be pretty liberally justified on fair use grounds.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake. We're not imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to preserve their cash value. We're imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to stop them from competing with present works. It keeps the cash value of present works up.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      That makes even less sense, though. Yesterday's news does not really compete with today's news, they're effectively in separate markets.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        So? Yesterday's books, movies, and music compete with today's books, movies, and music. Nobody cares about the news one way or the other. So the news gets treated just like everything else.
        dalbasal 5y ago
        Well... the fair use case and/or the public good case are pretty strong for news.
        bnj 5y ago
        There are virtually unlimited quantities of free to consume media - TV, Books, Movies. People don't pay more money for new creations because the older works aren't published or available. Relaxing copyright restrictions after a more reasonable period (seven years) doesn't take value away from new work, it enriches the public commons in a way that encourages the creation of new culture. A tiny portion of cultural works remain profitable after the first few years. Grant seven years of copyright automatically, and let creators purchase extensions in five year blocks that increase in price. $100 for five additional years, $1000 for five years after that, $10000 for five more, $100000 for five more. It makes no sense to barricade all cultural works behind a copyright wall to protect the tiny slice of properties that continue to pay dividends after a generation.
- iechoz6H 5y ago
  It's even worse than that, from the failed registration page: View 3 pages FREE when you register to help you get started Explore hundreds of national, regional and local titles dating from the 1700s-2000s Search, save and organise your favourite topics
- Normille 5y ago
  Oh. It's worse than that. Copyright apparently extends back to the middle ages: https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/ https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/
  - vidarh 5y ago
    The article does not say that. It conflates copyright and trademarks a couple of places, but it's clear that this is a combination of Redbubble applying their own over-cautious policies combined with trademark registrations, not copyright. There are plenty of issues with trademarks too, but they are very different to copyright.
    - Normille 5y ago
      I think the nub of the article is that the artist had his artwork banned just for referring to the fact his designs were inspired by a mediaeval manuscript ie. 'The Book of Kells' because Trinity College have trademarked 'The Book of Kells' to use as a brand name on products they sell. As it says in the article >...So, are [Trinity College] actually saying that no one is even allowed to mention "The Book of Kells", for fear of violating their copyright? If so, that’s really going to fuck up a lot of History books!... I take on board what you mean about the distinction between Copyright and Trademark, but I think it still serves to illustrate just how ridiculous the legal minefield around both issues has become.
- 5faulker 5y ago
  It's almost as if they're slowly declassifying documents over time.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    A funny thing is actual US classification guidance is the default declassification length is 10 years from publication, and the maximum length without a special appeal is 25 years: https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/foia/Classification%20Guidance.pdf https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/foia/Classification%20G...
nikkinana 5y ago
Nobody cares
open-source-ux 5y ago
Interesting facts about the British Library: - It requires every physical book published in the UK to be collected by the Library (since 1662) - It has 60 million individual newspaper editions - In 1999, the Library earmarked 60,000 volumes of non-British newspapers for disposal because it was running out of storage space (inviting criticism) - The newspapers were offered to overseas museums, or put up for auction. But the short notice given to museums meant many were unable to accept them (they also needed time to free up physical space) - The American writer Nicholson Baker used his own retirement money to purchase "2000 bound volumes of American newspapers - the last remaining copies in the world - including a complete run of the Chicago Tribune from 1888 to 1958 and hundreds of editions of Joseph Pulitzer's ground-breaking colour broadsheet of the 1890s, the New York World." [1] - The physical copies of the American newspapers were saved and become part of the American Newspaper Repository [2] a non-profit organisation which Baker founded. In 2004, the collection moved to Duke University. - Baker went on to publish a book of the whole affair in 2001 called Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. The Guardian published an interview with him in 2002 (below) [1] Paper Chase: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/mar/22/museums.referenceandlanguages https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/mar/22/museums.re... [2] From an archived copy of the American Newspaper Repository website: "Research libraries everywhere, including the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the Center for Research Libraries, have replaced most of their often richly illustrated sets of late 19th and 20th century newspapers with black and white microfilm."
- tokai 5y ago
  > It requires every physical book published in the UK to be collected by the Library Legal deposit is more the rule than exception for national libraries. Many national libraries are also saving copies of the national relevant web.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
Direct link to the site: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
- OJFord 5y ago
  Thanks, it's nicely parametrised and easy to browse; shame they decided to require free registration in order to actually view anything though.
  - Normille 5y ago
    You only get to see three pages for free. The original submission title is really misleading: >Try the British Newspaper Archive for FREE >View 3 pages FREE when you register to help you get started
    - simonw 5y ago
      Presumably that copy refers to how the site used to work prior to today, when they announced the new million free pages: https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/09/introducing-free-to-view-pages-on-the-british-newspaper-archive/ https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/09/introd... That blog post has a screenshot of an interface where you can chose to search either in "Free To View" or "Subscriber Access" - so presumably you now also get 3 free "subscriber access" pages. Confirmed: I created an account and I'm able to view unlimited pages with the "Free To View" filter.
tosser0001 5y ago
This is great. Historical newspapers are one of the largest corpora of information that has yet to be adequately brought on line. In the U.S. the Library of Congress has digitized a fair number, but at the state and local level it's really hit or miss. Some states such as California and New York have put quite a bit on line, but many others rely on individual towns and historical societies. Different pay services cover various papers, but there has never been concerted effort to digitize the staggering amount of microfilm that is out there.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  I wonder what ever happened to all the newspapers that were fed into services like CompuServe in the 80's. I dated a newspaper reporter during that era, and all of her stuff went into the online services. But her newspaper's current online archive only goes back to about 2005, even for subscribers.
- jf 5y ago
  > Historical newspapers are one of the largest corpora of information that has yet to be adequately brought on line. Not just information, but works of art as well! A few years ago, I trained an image classifier to help me find Krazy Kat comics in newspaper archives. In the process of doing that, I came across a shocking amount of other comics and artwork. I was honestly surprised to see how many amazing illustrations and comics are just sitting in newspaper archives, waiting to be rediscovered.
  - goto11 5y ago
    Fascinating. Fantagraphics (https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/newspaper-comics https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/newspaper-comics) have done great work restoring and publishing such classics, but there might be much more to discover.
wombatmobile 5y ago
Trove does this for Australian newspapers https://trove.nla.gov.au/ https://trove.nla.gov.au/
- aaron695 5y ago
  And because the newspapers were syndicated they also have the big stories around the world. Like the Carrington Event & Krakatoa, or Alexander Graham Bell's firewall to stop people stealing electricity, or pirate attacks on junks off Hong Kong.
blackcat201 5y ago
Do anyone know any existing effort on converting these scanned image to text corpus ( probably a new OCR model needed to be developed on these old text ) ? I think it would be more usable if they are in text form in terms of search and research purpose.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bnj 5y ago
  Well when Apple releases the next OS it will automatically OCR all images, so one possibility is just downloading them all on an Apple device.
- AaronNewcomer 5y ago
  It already is. I do text searches all the time here and have paid for a subscription for awhile now.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jack_riminton 5y ago
I wish more institutions 'tested the waters' with these copyright laws. Put a newspaper up from 100 years ago and see if anyone complains, if they do; take it down. Subtract 10 years every year until someone does complain.
- Angostura 5y ago
  I think you underestimate how assiduous copyright lawyers are. The automated systems would spot the post and prompt a complaint within minutes.
  - cpach 5y ago
    Hm… I’m not convinced about the likeliness of that outcome. Automated systems like that are mostly used on YouTube/Facebook, aren’t they?
  - sebzim4500 5y ago
    Do they really have automated systems searching for 50+ year old newspapers? Probably a lot of them haven't even been digitised before, so it would be impossible to search for them in an automated way.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      From personal experience, I can tell you that there are automated systems searching for such pieces of art. As for newspapers, all it takes is one copyright troll to realize it's happening, and suddenly there's lawsuit settlements everywhere, making him rich.
      - jack_riminton 5y ago
        For that to happen they'd have to be the owners of the Copyright, they're not exactly patent trolls who can use the law creatively. The Newspapers are largely regional (and mostly defunct) papers. Who at the Derby Evening Telegraph is going to waste lawyers fees getting a Library to remove 100year old content?
chris_wot 5y ago
The irony is that they gave money to the digitisation of newspapers, but this outfit then charged money fir it abs cut out the general public. Hopefully this will be like Australia’s Trove.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jfax 5y ago
I just came back from - actually, physically - visiting the British Library last week to do some research in the newsroom with microfilm and all. Title of this piqued my interest, but looking at the details, but the selection of papers they're adding seems kinda meh. Mostly the sort of local papers that British Newspaper Archive always had, and still can't compete with the horrendously proprietary Gale and ProQuest archives, which have national papers (Guardian, Observer, etc) and require physically turning up to the library to use. I used to have a pay-as-you-go subscription to BNA, to spite the monthly pay option that I figure I wouldn't make the most of, but it quite scandalously "expired".
dkd903 5y ago
This is great. When is the British Museum returning all its 1000s of stolen artefacts to their rightful owners? Vox: The British Museum is full of stolen artifacts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoTxiRWrvp8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoTxiRWrvp8 Here is a snippet from: Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy (p. 21). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. "The last hereditary Welsh prince, the memorably named Owain Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, built Powis Castle as a craggy fort in the thirteenth century; the estate was his reward for abandoning Wales to the rule of the English monarchy. But its most spectacular treasures date from a much later period of English conquest and appropriation. For Powis is simply awash with loot from India, room after room of imperial plunder, extracted by the East India Company (EIC) in the eighteenth century. There are more Mughal artefacts stacked in this private house in the Welsh countryside than are on display in any one place in India – even the National Museum in Delhi."
fortran77 5y ago
It's fascinating to read the British account of the American Revolutionary War in their newspapers. Many people were sympathetic, and it wasn't the top story most days. Just some trouble in the colonies. See: https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/07/03/how-did-the-british-press-cover-the-american-revolution/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/07/03/how-did-the-british-pre...
qxxx 5y ago
only 3 pages are free. To be able to view more you need to pay a monthly subscription.
laacz 5y ago
Latvia has it's own digital library of periodicals. It was digitized in few projects, and was made available to general reader (via periodika.lv) for free, except last 60 or so years, which were subject to copyright. However, when pandemic came, digital library became available for everyone without any copyright deductions.

324 points by aries1980 5y ago

> The British Library keeps to a ‘safe date’ when determining when a newspaper can be considered to be entirely out-of-copyright, which is 140 years after the date of publication. It's depressing that copyright has been extended so far it's now longer then any single individual's possible lifetime.

Zenst 5y ago
Wasn't it Disney and other media companies that pushed copyright duration towards this 140 year value? I vaguely recall that as a driving factor though maybe wrong and one of those unproven theories or meme'd news of times past. Be ironic (A children focused company like Disney pushing thru a change in law that actually in the end harms the children as it limits their access for their lifetime into copyright servitude that shows little thought for the children) if was as would sure add a whole new spin to the "think of the children" sound-bite often used to push thru some change in law/rules. Still, somewhat sad. More so as we build building today too a standard that is not that long-standing in years by design.
- fredoralive 5y ago
  AFAIK the 140 year is just an arbitary value the British Library have used, it isn't part of copyright law. The UK has used a life + X[1] years system since the 1840s[2]. I guess they assume 140 years is enough to ensure any unknown / untracable authors have been dead for long enough for a work to be near unquestionably in the public domain. [1] Where X has steadily increased with each copyright law revision. [2] The US was a weird outlier on this for a long time after most of the world settled on this system.
Ovah 5y ago
The National library of Sweden has a similar website but for newspapers printed in Sweden. They write "Copyright protection is valid for 115 years on the day. The free material is moved forward by one day every day." I get that likes such as Disney has an interest in extending it. Maybe a middle ground could be the ability to apply for extensions of individual works instead of a universal blanket extension? This long period really hampers my ability to do research on 1700s literature - a lot of such research was done in the early 1900s. But that content, even if it's 100 years old, just isn't indexed anywhere (e.g. Google books) due to copyright even if it is already digitized. https://tidningar.kb.se https://tidningar.kb.se
dalbasal 5y ago
This needs to change, big time. There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake. Not only are creators of valuable works is usually pretty distant from direct ownership anyway, there's no possible way for them to profit directly from this work. The only way a spotify-like deal works is because copyright ownership is conglomerated. IMO, public (especially free-as-in-beer) access to newspaper archives could be pretty liberally justified on fair use grounds.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake. We're not imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to preserve their cash value. We're imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to stop them from competing with present works. It keeps the cash value of present works up.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    That makes even less sense, though. Yesterday's news does not really compete with today's news, they're effectively in separate markets.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      So? Yesterday's books, movies, and music compete with today's books, movies, and music. Nobody cares about the news one way or the other. So the news gets treated just like everything else.
      - dalbasal 5y ago
        Well... the fair use case and/or the public good case are pretty strong for news.
      - bnj 5y ago
        There are virtually unlimited quantities of free to consume media - TV, Books, Movies. People don't pay more money for new creations because the older works aren't published or available. Relaxing copyright restrictions after a more reasonable period (seven years) doesn't take value away from new work, it enriches the public commons in a way that encourages the creation of new culture. A tiny portion of cultural works remain profitable after the first few years. Grant seven years of copyright automatically, and let creators purchase extensions in five year blocks that increase in price. $100 for five additional years, $1000 for five years after that, $10000 for five more, $100000 for five more. It makes no sense to barricade all cultural works behind a copyright wall to protect the tiny slice of properties that continue to pay dividends after a generation.
iechoz6H 5y ago
It's even worse than that, from the failed registration page: View 3 pages FREE when you register to help you get started Explore hundreds of national, regional and local titles dating from the 1700s-2000s Search, save and organise your favourite topics
Normille 5y ago
Oh. It's worse than that. Copyright apparently extends back to the middle ages: https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/ https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/
- vidarh 5y ago
  The article does not say that. It conflates copyright and trademarks a couple of places, but it's clear that this is a combination of Redbubble applying their own over-cautious policies combined with trademark registrations, not copyright. There are plenty of issues with trademarks too, but they are very different to copyright.
  - Normille 5y ago
    I think the nub of the article is that the artist had his artwork banned just for referring to the fact his designs were inspired by a mediaeval manuscript ie. 'The Book of Kells' because Trinity College have trademarked 'The Book of Kells' to use as a brand name on products they sell. As it says in the article >...So, are [Trinity College] actually saying that no one is even allowed to mention "The Book of Kells", for fear of violating their copyright? If so, that’s really going to fuck up a lot of History books!... I take on board what you mean about the distinction between Copyright and Trademark, but I think it still serves to illustrate just how ridiculous the legal minefield around both issues has become.
5faulker 5y ago
It's almost as if they're slowly declassifying documents over time.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  A funny thing is actual US classification guidance is the default declassification length is 10 years from publication, and the maximum length without a special appeal is 25 years: https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/foia/Classification%20Guidance.pdf https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/foia/Classification%20G...

nikkinana 5y ago

Nobody cares

open-source-ux 5y ago

Interesting facts about the British Library: - It requires every physical book published in the UK to be collected by the Library (since 1662) - It has 60 million individual newspaper editions - In 1999, the Library earmarked 60,000 volumes of non-British newspapers for disposal because it was running out of storage space (inviting criticism) - The newspapers were offered to overseas museums, or put up for auction. But the short notice given to museums meant many were unable to accept them (they also needed time to free up physical space) - The American writer Nicholson Baker used his own retirement money to purchase "2000 bound volumes of American newspapers - the last remaining copies in the world - including a complete run of the Chicago Tribune from 1888 to 1958 and hundreds of editions of Joseph Pulitzer's ground-breaking colour broadsheet of the 1890s, the New York World." [1] - The physical copies of the American newspapers were saved and become part of the American Newspaper Repository [2] a non-profit organisation which Baker founded. In 2004, the collection moved to Duke University. - Baker went on to publish a book of the whole affair in 2001 called Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. The Guardian published an interview with him in 2002 (below) [1] Paper Chase: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/mar/22/museums.referenceandlanguages https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/mar/22/museums.re... [2] From an archived copy of the American Newspaper Repository website: "Research libraries everywhere, including the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the Center for Research Libraries, have replaced most of their often richly illustrated sets of late 19th and 20th century newspapers with black and white microfilm."

tokai 5y ago
> It requires every physical book published in the UK to be collected by the Library Legal deposit is more the rule than exception for national libraries. Many national libraries are also saving copies of the national relevant web.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

Direct link to the site: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

OJFord 5y ago
Thanks, it's nicely parametrised and easy to browse; shame they decided to require free registration in order to actually view anything though.
- Normille 5y ago
  You only get to see three pages for free. The original submission title is really misleading: >Try the British Newspaper Archive for FREE >View 3 pages FREE when you register to help you get started
  - simonw 5y ago
    Presumably that copy refers to how the site used to work prior to today, when they announced the new million free pages: https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/09/introducing-free-to-view-pages-on-the-british-newspaper-archive/ https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/09/introd... That blog post has a screenshot of an interface where you can chose to search either in "Free To View" or "Subscriber Access" - so presumably you now also get 3 free "subscriber access" pages. Confirmed: I created an account and I'm able to view unlimited pages with the "Free To View" filter.

tosser0001 5y ago

This is great. Historical newspapers are one of the largest corpora of information that has yet to be adequately brought on line. In the U.S. the Library of Congress has digitized a fair number, but at the state and local level it's really hit or miss. Some states such as California and New York have put quite a bit on line, but many others rely on individual towns and historical societies. Different pay services cover various papers, but there has never been concerted effort to digitize the staggering amount of microfilm that is out there.

reaperducer 5y ago
I wonder what ever happened to all the newspapers that were fed into services like CompuServe in the 80's. I dated a newspaper reporter during that era, and all of her stuff went into the online services. But her newspaper's current online archive only goes back to about 2005, even for subscribers.
jf 5y ago
> Historical newspapers are one of the largest corpora of information that has yet to be adequately brought on line. Not just information, but works of art as well! A few years ago, I trained an image classifier to help me find Krazy Kat comics in newspaper archives. In the process of doing that, I came across a shocking amount of other comics and artwork. I was honestly surprised to see how many amazing illustrations and comics are just sitting in newspaper archives, waiting to be rediscovered.
- goto11 5y ago
  Fascinating. Fantagraphics (https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/newspaper-comics https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/newspaper-comics) have done great work restoring and publishing such classics, but there might be much more to discover.

wombatmobile 5y ago

Trove does this for Australian newspapers https://trove.nla.gov.au/ https://trove.nla.gov.au/

aaron695 5y ago
And because the newspapers were syndicated they also have the big stories around the world. Like the Carrington Event & Krakatoa, or Alexander Graham Bell's firewall to stop people stealing electricity, or pirate attacks on junks off Hong Kong.

blackcat201 5y ago

Do anyone know any existing effort on converting these scanned image to text corpus ( probably a new OCR model needed to be developed on these old text ) ? I think it would be more usable if they are in text form in terms of search and research purpose.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bnj 5y ago
Well when Apple releases the next OS it will automatically OCR all images, so one possibility is just downloading them all on an Apple device.
AaronNewcomer 5y ago
It already is. I do text searches all the time here and have paid for a subscription for awhile now.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jack_riminton 5y ago

I wish more institutions 'tested the waters' with these copyright laws. Put a newspaper up from 100 years ago and see if anyone complains, if they do; take it down. Subtract 10 years every year until someone does complain.

Angostura 5y ago
I think you underestimate how assiduous copyright lawyers are. The automated systems would spot the post and prompt a complaint within minutes.
- cpach 5y ago
  Hm… I’m not convinced about the likeliness of that outcome. Automated systems like that are mostly used on YouTube/Facebook, aren’t they?
- sebzim4500 5y ago
  Do they really have automated systems searching for 50+ year old newspapers? Probably a lot of them haven't even been digitised before, so it would be impossible to search for them in an automated way.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    From personal experience, I can tell you that there are automated systems searching for such pieces of art. As for newspapers, all it takes is one copyright troll to realize it's happening, and suddenly there's lawsuit settlements everywhere, making him rich.
    - jack_riminton 5y ago
      For that to happen they'd have to be the owners of the Copyright, they're not exactly patent trolls who can use the law creatively. The Newspapers are largely regional (and mostly defunct) papers. Who at the Derby Evening Telegraph is going to waste lawyers fees getting a Library to remove 100year old content?

chris_wot 5y ago

The irony is that they gave money to the digitisation of newspapers, but this outfit then charged money fir it abs cut out the general public. Hopefully this will be like Australia’s Trove.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jfax 5y ago

I just came back from - actually, physically - visiting the British Library last week to do some research in the newsroom with microfilm and all. Title of this piqued my interest, but looking at the details, but the selection of papers they're adding seems kinda meh. Mostly the sort of local papers that British Newspaper Archive always had, and still can't compete with the horrendously proprietary Gale and ProQuest archives, which have national papers (Guardian, Observer, etc) and require physically turning up to the library to use. I used to have a pay-as-you-go subscription to BNA, to spite the monthly pay option that I figure I wouldn't make the most of, but it quite scandalously "expired".

dkd903 5y ago

This is great. When is the British Museum returning all its 1000s of stolen artefacts to their rightful owners? Vox: The British Museum is full of stolen artifacts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoTxiRWrvp8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoTxiRWrvp8 Here is a snippet from: Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy (p. 21). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. "The last hereditary Welsh prince, the memorably named Owain Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, built Powis Castle as a craggy fort in the thirteenth century; the estate was his reward for abandoning Wales to the rule of the English monarchy. But its most spectacular treasures date from a much later period of English conquest and appropriation. For Powis is simply awash with loot from India, room after room of imperial plunder, extracted by the East India Company (EIC) in the eighteenth century. There are more Mughal artefacts stacked in this private house in the Welsh countryside than are on display in any one place in India – even the National Museum in Delhi."

fortran77 5y ago

It's fascinating to read the British account of the American Revolutionary War in their newspapers. Many people were sympathetic, and it wasn't the top story most days. Just some trouble in the colonies. See: https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/07/03/how-did-the-british-press-cover-the-american-revolution/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/07/03/how-did-the-british-pre...

qxxx 5y ago

only 3 pages are free. To be able to view more you need to pay a monthly subscription.

laacz 5y ago

Latvia has it's own digital library of periodicals. It was digitized in few projects, and was made available to general reader (via periodika.lv) for free, except last 60 or so years, which were subject to copyright. However, when pandemic came, digital library became available for everyone without any copyright deductions.