19TH CENTURY BRITISH LIBRARY NEWSPAPERS : UTILISING THE ONLINE DATABASE

Many runs of older newspapers are being converted into digital formats, and made available online. The British Library (BL) has one of the world's finest collections of newspapers. Legal deposit for newspapers published in the UK has ensured the systematic deposit of newspapers since the 1840s. In recent years, the BL has been planning the digitisation of its older newspaper collections, to bring the texts to a wider audience. The paper will look at the results of work of the BL, in converting 2 million pages of its older 19 th century UK newspapers into digital format. The paper will explore briefly issues surrounding the conversion of the texts, and then explore how researchers may utilise the resource now available.