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<p>Work on improving and maintaining access to local newspaper records and archives
is led by colleagues at the British Library and The National Archives respectively,
using funding from their core budgets.</p><p>The British Library collects physical
newspapers and online news sites under legal deposit. The additional work the British
Library does in this area makes newspapers as accessible as possible at no cost to
the taxpayer. It holds a newspaper collection of over 60 million issues (450 million
pages) dating from 1619 to the present day, and since 2010 has been working on a strategy
to preserve and protect newspapers for researchers and the general public. This includes
working in partnership with Findmypast to produce the British Newspaper Archive (BNA),
an online subscription resource enabling online access to historic digitised newspapers
while creating preservation files for the British Library’s Digital Library Store.
The BNA is free to access in British Library Reading Rooms.</p><p>The task of digitising
archived physical material is substantial, but progress is being made both through
central projects, with c. 46 million pages digitised since 2011, and through partnerships
between the British Library and local libraries such as Birmingham, Wexford, Jersey
and Shropshire. Projects undertaken with local libraries and councils allow local
services to benefit from the expertise of the British Library on a cost recovery basis
(i.e. not for profit).</p><p>In terms of improving access to archives, The National
Archives has been delivering against its Archives Unlocked strategy since 2017. In
order to achieve this, The National Archives works to support the Archives sector
to develop digital capacity, build resilience and demonstrate impact through innovation
and by building new audiences. Officials from The National Archives have collaborated
with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on the Culture is Digital
project, to highlight where the archives sector can demonstrate leadership (such as
digitisation) as well as develop and grow alongside other cultural bodies.</p><p>
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