Minister helps to create digital newspaper archive

The Minister was shown around the library's state-of-the-art digitisation facility, its international document supply operations and the recently-opened additional storage building.

Last October the Government granted 33m to the British Library to move the national newspaper collection – currently held in Colindale, north London – to a planned Newspaper Storage Building, which will be built on the Boston Spa site, near Wetherby.

During the visit, Mr Bradshaw was given the opportunity to digitise a newspaper from the library's collection using a large-format overhead scanner.

The library has already digitised around three million newspaper pages; two million pages can be viewed via the 19th Century British Library Newspapers website at: http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs

Digitisation of historic newspapers allows researchers to access archive material online, perform automated searches and – crucially – reduces wear and tear to fragile newspaper pages.

The British Library's long-term strategy for newspapers envisions tens of millions more pages of newspapers being digitised and made available via the library's reading rooms and the web.

The British Library is one of the world's greatest research libraries. Its collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items.