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News media at the
British Library
ALISS visit, 20 April 2015
Luke McKernan
Lead Curator, News and Moving Image
luke.mckernan@bl.uk

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News at the British Library

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Newspapers
 57,000 separate newspaper, journal, and periodical
titles: approximately 100m issues (of which 60m are
newspapers), from 17thC to today
 Current acquisition: 1,400 newspaper and
weekly/fortnightly periodical titles
 Print copies acquired under legal deposit but will move
increasingly towards digital acquisition
 Physical access at St Pancras (print newspapers,
microfilm) and Boston Spa (print newspapers), with
digital access at both locations
 Around one third of collection is on microfilm. If we have
microfilm or digital copy, we don’t provide access to
print copy
 Online access to 11m newspaper pages via British
Newspaper Archive
(http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.com)

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Newspaper collection highlights
 Thomason Tracts – 7,200 Civil War and other 17thC
newsbooks and newspapers
 Burney Collection – 700 bound volumes of newspapers
1603-1818
 British and Irish newspapers collected under legal
deposit since 1869
 Overseas newspapers from 1631 onwards, with
extensive British Commonwealth titles (c.90 titles
currently received)
 Press cuttings inc Chatham House Press Library
Collection

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Newspapers – electronic resources
 1.5m newspapers and news-related journals available
onsite via subscription services e.g. ProQuest, Gale
Cengage, Newsbank
 Includes Times Digital Archive, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror,
Guardian/Observer, Times of India, World Newspaper
Archive, Early American Newspapers, Latin American
newspapers
 International newspapers represented for Americas,
Africa, Asia, Europe and Russia, Australasia, Middle
East
 Also many free newspaper sources: Gallica, Chronicling
America, Trove, Papers Past, NewspapersSG
 Access onsite only

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National Newspaper Building
Boston Spa, Yorkshire
 33km of shelving
 280,000 volumes
 14-15% oxygen
 20m-high stacks
 Robotic retrieval
 Officially opened
January 2015
 Riding the robots

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Newspapers
http://www.bl.uk/subjects/news-media

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Newspaper database
http://explore.bl.uk

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Newspaper database
http://explore.bl.uk

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British Newspaper Archive
http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

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Television and radio news
 Began recording television and radio news programmes
receivable in the UK in May 2010
 Collection now over 57,000 programmes, of which
45,000 are TV, recorded off-air from 22 channels inc.
BBC, Al-Jazeera, Russia Today, CNN, CCTV (China),
NHK, Bloomberg, France 24, World Service, LBC
 40 hours of TV and 22 hours of radio captured per day
 Born digital archive, including Electronic Programme
Guide data and subtitles where available
 Recording many extra programmes for 2015 General
Election
 Access onsite only, owing to copyright restrictions, via
Broadcast News service

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Broadcast News
http://videoserver.bl.uk (onsite only)

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Web news
 Non-print legal deposit legislation introduced in April 2013
means British Library can now harvest and archive UK
websites
 Initial annual crawl collected from 4.5M .uk websites and
web pages – 1.9bn URLs
 Harvesting over 1,100 UK news websites on daily/weekly
basis, with particular interest in hyperlocal news
 Targeting of particular news events e.g. death of Nelson
Mandela, including social media
 Access onsite only at British Library and other legal
deposit libraries
 Small number of sites available to all via UK Web Archive
– http://www.webarchive.org.uk

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UK Web Archive
http://www.webarchive.org.uk

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The Newsroom
 Main reading room for news media
 Opened at St Pancras site March 2014 – on Floor 2
 Reading room with networking annexe
 Provides access to newspapers (digital, microfilm and
print), television, radio and Web news
 Access to print newspapers only where a ‘surrogate’
copy (digital or microfilm) does not exist. Delivery of
print newspapers takes 48 hours
 An expression of intent, bringing together all of the news
media in the one place

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The Newsroom
“Open for business”

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Contact
 Luke McKernan – Lead Curator, News & Moving Image
 luke.mckernan@bl.uk
 Stephen Lester – Newspaper Curator
 stephen.lester@bl.uk
 Web - http://www.bl.uk/subjects/news-media
 Blog - http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/thenewsroom
 Twitter - @BL_newsroom
 General enquiries
 newspaper@bl.uk
 broadcastnews@bl.uk