National and regional newspapers from the 19th century are available online following a three-way collaboration between the British Library, funding body JISC and Cengage Learning. Access to the online archive will be free for higher and further education users, but not for others.

Putting the British Library’s newspaper archive online is part of JISC’s wider £22m digitisation programme. Cengage Learning, formerly Thomson Learning, undertook the digitisation process.

Material on the online archive, called British Library Newspaper, was previously available only to academic users personally visiting the British Library’s London Colindale rooms.

Digitisation focused on national newspapers no longer in print, English regional newspapers, and national newspapers in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, as well as titles that specialised in areas such as Victorian radicalism and Chartists. Leading national newspapers such as the Telegraph and the Daily Mail have not been included as they are building their own archives.

JISC chair Ron Cooke tested the site and found 36,500 entries on flooding, a resource he described as invaluable for climate change researchers.

Sir Colin Lucas, chairman of the British Library, said that newspapers taking up 20 miles of shelving at Colindale had been digitised for the online system.

The Colindale site, which houses the physical newspaper archive, is due to close in 2012, when the collection will move to Boston Spa to enjoy a better preservation environment.

Access to the physical archive will still be granted in special cases.