The British Library announced today in less than poetic language that lovers of ancient newsprint should brace for a "mass digitisation." No longer will the 30,000 researchers who make the pilgrimage each year to the Newspaper Library have to traipse to Colindale: soon, 350 years of local, national and international news stories (52,000 titles and counting) will wend their way webward.brightsolid, a subsidiary of Dundee-based publisher, D.C. Thomson, will scan up to four million pages in the next two years, gnashing ever faster through the pile. By 2020, they reckon they'll have all 40 million pages scanned in. The website will go live next year. Finally, you'll get to read about Napoleon being buried under the willows on St. Helena, look up the Whitechapel murders, or find an eye-witness to The Great Mutiny in India sans microfilm. But have your credit card handy, love: nothing in this life is free.
Unless you go online inside the library, of course. You'll have to go to London for that, but then, why not? Check out the marvelous map exhibit while you're there.
