It’s hard to believe, but The British Newspaper Archive has now reached the grand old age of three. We launched on 29 November 2011 with 4 million fully searchable historic newspaper pages and have come a long way since then.Please click the image to enlarge itA treasure trove of informationYou can now search more than 9 million pages, from over 300 British and Irish newspaper titles, spanning 1710-1954. Reading all of those pages would be no mean feat – we’ve estimated that it would…
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We’ve recently donated 100 subscriptions to the Wikipedia community through the Wikipedia Library, a grant-funded programme which makes it easier for experienced volunteer editors to access research materials.It’s very exciting to be involved in this new partnership. It allows us to contribute to Wikipedia, one of the most frequently used reference tools in the world, and demonstrates how local British and Irish newspapers can help improve public information about historical topics from around the world.We asked Simon Tushingham, one…
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Service Announcement – BNA search service maintenance this afternoonThat’s keyword search back up and running. Until two years ago (i.e. pre launch of The BNA!) there wasn’t an option to search these old newspapers by keyword – we certainly missed it for that short maintenance period : )Enjoy!Best wishes,Team BNA…
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More content, more quickly! The BNA tech upgrade – an updateWe hope that you have all been enjoying the lovely Summer weather lately?You may have noticed that there has been a slow-down in the number of pages added to the site recently. There is a fantastic reason for this . . . [drumroll please] . . . We are delighted to announce that we have been busy working on upgrading our newspaper ingest and post-processing system. Once we’re up and running with the new system,…
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We were delighted (and just a little star-struck!) to see John Bishop using the BNA website in last night’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ programme.John was looking for information on his gg-grandfather, Charles Bishop, who left the army in the 1850s to pursue a musical career, and he found several stories in the Archive about his musical ancestor.We’re going to post a couple of these stories on the blog shortly. But, in the meantime, if you live…
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We’re looking forward to learning about the ancestors of John Barnes in tonight’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’The listing for the show on the BBC website mentions ‘secret telegrams’ and internment, so we think this will be a very interesting programme, which will shed light on Jamaica’s struggle for independence.Oh, and we’ll be looking out for any historical newspapers that are used in the research on his ancestors.– BBC1, Wednesday 17 October, 21:00.– www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nh6qj…
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We really enjoyed hearing about the ancestors of William Roache in last night’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’In particular, we loved learning about the evolution of Blackpool as a blingy mecca for tourists, and the very interesting role that William’s ancestors played in the development of the city.If you live in the UK and missed the programme, you can watch it on the BBC iPlayer.– www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01n2thm/Who_Do_You_Think_You_Are_Series_9_William_Roache/…
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The ancestors of William Roache are up for inspection in tonight’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’We’re especially looking forward to learning about his entrepreneurial great-grandfather, who dealt in some very unusual wares in 19th Century Blackpool. Curious and curiouser. . .We hope that, as in last week’s show on Alex Kingston, old newspapers will be used to add colour and character to the lives of William Roache’s family ancestors.– BBC1, Wednesday, 26 September, 21:00– www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n2thm…
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The ancestors of Alex Kingston will be featured in tonight’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are?In addition to learning about the death of her great-grandfather in World War One, Alex will be trying to discover if there is any Jewish ancestry in her family tree.In the trailer for the programme, it looks like historical newspapers are one of the resources used for Alex’s research – so we’re really looking forward to see which newspapers are featured!– BBC1,…
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We’re very much looking forward to watching Annie Lennox in tonight’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’From what we’ve heard about tonight’s show, we believe it’s going to be a very moving programme.It seems that, in particular, a kirk session record from the mid-18th Century will arouse Annie’s righteous anger.It’ll be interesting to see if Annie’s research involves using any old newspapers – if so, we’ll see if we can find these stories in the Archive.…
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