04 August 2016

British Newspaper Archive passes 15 million pages

Alongside DNA digitized newspapers are the best resource to come to the fore for genealogy since the year 2000. Just over 15 million pages is the number advertised as available at the British Newspaper Archive. That's since the project start in 2011.

On 30 August 2013 this blog reported "More than two years after the start just under 7 million pages are digitized. The project has not been progressing at a rate that would achieve 40 million pages digitized in 10 years as originally targeted."

That's still the case.

The subsequent 3 years have seen a further 8 million pages digitized. At that rate by the end of 2021 another 5.4 years, the ten year mark, there would be about 30 million pages digitized, well short of the 40 million page goal.

To date there are 1.42 million issues digitized for England; 0.31 million for Scotland; 0.11 for Northern Ireland and 0.05 million for Wales (the National Library of Wales has its own newspaper digitization project.) On a per capita basis Scotland is being treated very favourably.

For England it has been a source of some frustration that my home county of Norfolk has received so little attention by the project, that has been my impression anyway. But misery loves company. West Sussex, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Dorset, Essex and Cheshire all have fewer issues digitized than Norfolk on a per capita basis.

Which counties in England have the best per capita coverage? Bristol, with 21 times better coverage than West Sussex, followed by Gloucestershire, Devon, East Riding of Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, Derbyshire and, Suffolk,

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