It is good to be involved in a good thing. Last week, after years of development and the coming together of assorted initiatives, the British Library made one million pages from historic newspapers freely available online. Next year it will publish one million more, and million the year after that. At the same time rawRead More
Category: Libraries
The sorting of lists
A few years ago I thought it would be a useful things for the British Library (my employers) to have a shareable list of its newspapers. I had been speaking to an American archive with whom I wanted to share the records we had, and it seemed a reasonable thing to do. There had beenRead More
Collecting news
In two years’ time, it will be the four hundredth anniversary of the newspaper in this country. The first known newspaper in English, Corrant out of Italy, Germany, &c. was published on 2 December 1620, in Amsterdam. A year later, on 24 September 1621, the first newspaper was published in this country, the Corante, or,Read More
The last library
I went to St Helena, one of the remotest spots on the planet. I flew thousands miles to get there, travelling down a continent and then across an ocean. When there I met wonderful people, saw entrancing countryside, visited historic locations, scaled heights to enjoy exhilarating views. I spent two weeks in the most exoticRead More
The end of archives
In the dead days between Christmas and New Year, when news can only report on its absence, an announcement was made by the Library of Congress which has a major implication for archives and public memory. The Library will no longer attempt to archive Twitter comprehensively. In April 2010 the Library of Congress and TwitterRead More
Spotless
I went to the cinema this afternoon to see Spotlight, and I was very impressed. It is fully deserving of its Academy Award. It is not only a gripping, sobering account of priestly child abuse in Boston, but champions the noble practice of investigative journalism, highlighting the best of newspapers at a time when theRead More
From print to digital
This is the text of a blog post on the archiving of news which I wrote recently for the British Library’s Newsroom blog. Wherever possible – or wherever it interests me – I’m reproducing texts here which have been written on other platforms. The news that The Independent and The Independent on Sunday are toRead More
Céline and Julie go to the library
At the British Library (the institution which kindly helps me keep body and soul together) we regularly make promotional videos. They are snappy little numbers, designed to show what a bright, inviting and relevant place the Library is. The editing is brisk, the graphics float informatively over the screen, and the music is toe-tapping. YetRead More
Forget me not
My favourite website of the moment is the marvellous Forgotify.com. It is based on an absolutely inspired idea that also reveals a profound truth or two. Its simple premise is that there are four million songs on the music service Spotify which have been played by no one – around 20%. So Forgotify makes theseRead More
The Newsroom
Every now and again someone will come up to me and say that they like something on my blog, and I have to ask them which one. I have produced too many websites, blogs and the like these past few years, leaving several by the wayside (Screen Research, Diving for Pearls, Moving Image, BardBox, TheRead More