Free access to 19th C British Newspaper Collection

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:44 am

Carol’s interpretation would be the correct one. They’re offering the trial to institutions not individuals. This database was made available to Further and Higher Education institutions in the UK only via JISC funding from 1 Oct 2007. The current free trial appears to be an introduction to the roll out to Libraries etc. worldwide via Gale as mentioned in this page.

http://www.bl.uk/collections/britishnew ... o1900.html

It is probably a good time to start hoping that your local or State or County library takes this up in a form that is available to library members from home. Alternatively you could bring it to the attention of your library or family history society or write to someone political who might have some influence over the funding of such things.

Alan

Chris Paton · Post by **Chris Paton** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:53 am

Sorry folks, I guess it looks like it is too good to be true. The person who informed me of this claimed she was able to get access through it, but if it is not available to the general public, then it would perhaps be odd to offer the public a free trial. So Alan's advice is probably the best course of action.

Many apologies - some you win, some you lose!

Chris

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:31 am

There’s nothing to be sorry about Chris,

It’s much better to bring these things to notice rather than run the risk of people missing out on something potentially as important as this may have been.

All the best,
Alan

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:28 am

Hi all
From experience with Gale a couple of years ago: after I'd asked them to look into it, my college applied for a trial access to the Times (their current Athens subscription allowed access only to archived copies of recent issues, which was not much use to me - I hoped we could get a free trial of the older material)

Despite filling in the form on two occaisions and emailing to try to follow up, nothing more was ever heard from Gale by our head librarian- so even educaitonal establishments are ignored, it seems!

Best wishes
Lesley

Post by **Anne H** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 3:51 pm

Hi Lesley,

In that case, I don't think I'll hold my breath in anticipation

Regards,
Anne H

Post by **SarahND** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:29 pm

I checked on WorldCat.Org to see if by any stretch of the imagination it was in a library near me and was stunned to see that, rather than the big university which is just a few minutes away, it was available in a small state university 66 miles up the road. So you never know.

That said, I checked the catalog and what they appear to have is a minimal release of "selected issues" from various years. However, since it says it is an online resource, perhaps it has upgraded as the resource has expanded? I'm going to ask the reference librarian there and hope.

But... sorry Anne, it seems that the closest library to you that has the newspapers is in Ohio

That goes for Carol also

But Sheila, you can get it at UCLA

Basically, you have libraries in Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota

, California and Oregon. Those come up no matter what state you enter in the location box, so it looks like that's it. Maybe it's because they never respond to institution requests

Regards,
Sarah

Post by **Anne H** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:04 pm

Hi Sarah,

But... sorry Anne, it seems that the closest library to you that has the newspapers is in Ohio

Oh, well

Unless I relocate, it looks like I'm definitely out of luck with this

Thanks for checking

Regards,
Anne H

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 6:11 pm

Ohio is right on the way to Michigan, but they just had 20 some inches of snow up there!

And my daffodils are blooming down here so I guess I'm going to wimp out on this one!

Carol

Post by **SarahND** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 6:41 pm

Aw, come on, Carol,
It's above freezing here in MN for the 3rd straight day

We can almost see the ground in places and the mini ice rink out by the garage is no longer looking so threatening

I'm sure Michigan will be thawed out in no time...

Cheers,
Sarah

sheilajim · Post by **sheilajim** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:14 pm

Hi Sarah

UCLA!

I haven't been to Los Angeles County for years.

Now if they had it in UC Irvine, that would be another matter.

Regards