British Newspaper Archive

[newburychap]

From their website Launching in Autumn 2011, the British Newspaper Archive, sneak previews at FH fairs, tweeting madly to generate interest - but no information that the potential users really want to know:

When will the site actually appear? 
How much will it cost?
How long is autumn?

Can anyone answer either of the first two questions?

[KB783]

Its being done by Brightsolid Online Publishing Ltd, the owners of findmypast.co.uk so no doubt will result in an increase in subscription charges.

[newburychap]

Or it won't be available on their existing websites but on a new one.

[dawnsh]

According to the November Bulletin available at the library and online, it will be later this month.

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/readerbulletin/nov2011/novreadbull.html#archive

Dawn

[Sloe Gin]

There's a beta site in operation until 10:00am on Monday, 14th November.  I don't know how long it's been up, as I only got the email today, having registered a few days ago.  One is invited to buy 1000 credits for £6.95 and pages will be 10 credits to view during the beta phase.  I've found one report I'd like to view, but am not likely to be able to make use of the other 990 credits in little more than a day.   

The 12 month "unlimited" subscription is going to be capped, surprise surprise, and the T&Cs seem over-stringent, but I expected that from this lot.  Luckily I've been able to get a lot of useful stuff already from the Gale collection via my library sub. 

[newburychap]

I've had a go on the beta - the free search results are fairly good, would enable one to put together a list of articles to get on the next visit to the library. Of course this will mean that I can use the out of copyright data I collect ...

One irritation is that, when I searched for a phrase "public house" it still gave loads of hits for articles with "house" and "public" but not the phrase, meaning there are a lot of useless hits.  Then again it is a beta - I'll report this to them.

I soon had 100 interesting hits so I will probably spend a few hours using up £6.95.

The major irritation is that I can't find the cost of a subscription - if I spend £6.95 during beta and then take a subscription it will be £6.95 wasted.

[Jean McGurn]

Luckily I've been able to get a lot of useful stuff already from the Gale collection via my library sub.

Will this mean that the library sub access will no longer be available?

Jean

[Braindead]

Will this mean that the library sub access will no longer be available?

I'm wondering that too.

For those who have been on the beta site, how does the content compare to the 19th Century Newspaper Archive, operated by Gale Cengage? Is the "old" content on the new site?

[Old Bristolian]

I've spent most of the day on the beta site - but still only managed to use 210 of my 1000 credits - but well worth the £6.95. I checked the Gale site some years ago & nothing I found today was on it - likewise none of the Gale items I found were on the Newspaper Archive site - is this a totally different archive?

Steve