According to a recent press release, the British Library has entered into a 10-year partnership with Brightsolid, an online publisher, to digitize 52,000 local, regional, national, and international newspapers. Within the next two years, a minimum of four million pages of newspapers will be digitized and within ten years, it is hoped that 40 million pages will be digitized.
In addition to the out-of-copyright newspapers, the partners are seeking to digitize in-copyright material after negotiations with rightsholders. The project aims to “build a critical mass of material for researchers – particularly in the fields of family history and genealogy.”
The digitized material will be available for free to users while on-site at the British Library.
