JISC Digitisation Programme

The inclusion of another 1m pages on the BL Historic Newspapers website takes the total number of pages of 19th Century Newspapers available online to over 3 million

22 new titles cover a range of both regional and metropolitan publications including the Cheshire Observer, the Royal Cornwall Gazette, the Isle of Man Times and the Nottinghamshire Guardian

The British Library’s 19th Century Newspapers project, developed in partnership with JISC and Gale part of Cengage Learning, offers researchers greatly enhanced access to a vast archive of socially, culturally and historically important collections previously only available in the Library’s London-based reading rooms.

Providing highly illustrated materials on topics as diverse as the war in the Crimea to ladies fashion, the new additions both widen and deepen this unique resource, offering users a broader cross section of British society in the 19th century.

Adding to an existing selection of 49 titles, the 22 additional publications have been chosen by leading experts and academics to significantly extend the geographical coverage of the resource including a whole range of both regional and metropolitan titles.

The additions to the archive have also sought to provide a more comprehensive picture of the political spectrum in the 19th century and include the entire runs of two additional major London papers – The Morning Post and The Standard – offering the conservative viewpoint alongside the liberal and radical papers already digitised such as the Daily News and Reynold’s Newspaper.

Free access for for all staff and students in UK HE is available via institutional gateways.

I recently blogged about the launch of the University of Exeter’s Digital Collections Online.

Some of the amazing images that were digitised and added to the repository demand to be highlighted in more depth.

With all the hype about Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland film, it seems appropriate to highlight the amazing collection of images that the archive holds on film and cinema (and the optical and visual more generally).

The image of Alice included in this piece, is taken from a box of slides that come originate in a Magic Lantern Collection.

This pre-cinematic invention used a series of slides that were projected onto a wall.   Smallscale shows were put on by  travelling lanternists using a candle to project the images.

Occassionally visual tricks were employed to engage and capture the audiences attention – not dissimilar to our ongoing fascination and the appeal of 3D at the movies!

But, the link between the past and present is not the only value of digitising and making these collections available online.

The collection held by Exeter is fascinating, not only for what it can tell us about the history of cinema and film;  but also how the edges of each object and collection of objects touch upon, and overlap with other areas of study and research.

Many of the slide collections are incredibly rich resources for researchers and students looking not only at, for example,  cinematic history, but also the subject matter and content of the images and objects themselves.

Magic lantern slides cover subject areas including,  astrology and zoology offering a rare and primary source glimpse into Victorian culture and ideas.

The project has attempted to provide preliminary pathways through some of the content by creating ‘curated’ collections and e-learning packages centred around certain themes.

It seems this collection cannot help but cross new boundaries and inspire new ideas and avenues of thought.