UK releases 5 million pages of old newspaper articles for free

The British Newspaper Archive (BNA), a project to digitize newspapers owned by the British Library, announced on August 9, 2021 that some of its electronic archives will be released free of charge. This time, 1 million pages published by 1880 were subject to free publication, and 5 million pages will be available for free viewing, 1 million pages per year for the next four years.

BNA is a project that aims to widely publicize the historical resources of the British Library, and has already published 44 million pages of newspapers, weekly magazines, sports, fashion, and political magazines across the country, including the British Commonwealth, including Jamaica, India, and New Zealand. being electronic. This is equivalent to 10% of the newspapers owned by the British Library, and it is said that 500,000 pages are added to the archive every month.

A £80 a year subscription is required to view all of these archives, but BNA has decided to release some for free. One million pages of 158 paper newspapers published between 1720 and 1880 are being released for free this time. It is said that the publication date was set until 1880 because there is a period of 140 years for copyright to completely expire in the UK.

The free archives are searchable on the BNA site , and a free account registration is required to view them. If you search and then check (Free To View) on the left, you can narrow down and check only articles that have been published for free. Related information can be found here.