Unmissable invite to read all about it.(British Library and technical partner Cengage Learning new website)

Byline: Mark Chillingworth

Unmissable invite to read all about it

' site review

They are the first draft of history but, as many researchers would admit, are often overlooked. Historic newspapers, though, could enter the mindsets and research habits of academics with a bang, thanks to a new service from the British Library and technical partner Cengage Learning.

Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), 19th Century British Library Newspapers is a digital archive that puts the national library's Colindale collection onto the desktops of academia.

The incessant hunger to describe what is happening right in front of them puts journalists into a different category from historians. As a result, journalism has been A- and still is A- treated as a very different research resource.

Whereas citation provides a continuing context for older research papers, newspapers have typically ended their days as chip wrappers (for those old enough to remember such culinary traditions). Apart from a few archives maintained by newspaper companies and the British Library, they are usually rapidly discarded and seldom seen again.