A great number of printed books, manuscripts, and
other BL collection items have been digitised in recent years. This paper
briefly outlines some of the sources now available online. Some of the links
will be to databases, which are only available if you register and pay a
subscription. Other links will be to data which is free to use. If you are able
to secure a British Library reader pass, then most of the databases are likely
be free to use within a British Library Reading Room at St Pancras.
1.
BL Printed books digitised and online
1.1 A great deal has been done by Gale Cengage, and
lists of collections available are at
http://gdc.gale.com/products/gale-newsvault/1.2. Gale has made available ECCO (eighteenth century collections online), based upon the BL English short title catalogue. You can cross search both ECCO and EEBO (Early English books online)
http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product-highlights/history/eighteenth-century-collections-online.aspx
1.3. The Microsoft BL 19th century (British) books project was originally announced in 2008:
http://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/The-British-Library-19th-Century-Book-Digitisation-Project-343.aspx
An outcome of this has been the upload of one million pages of these books onto Flickr
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-first-steps.html
1.4 If you know the title or author you can search for a book at BL explore
http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=1&dstmp=1420044705945&vid=BLVU1&fromLogin=true
Similarly, you can search for a specific book in the BL printed books catalogue. If you encounter the SFX code within a catalogue entry, when you say you want to see the book, you are able to download the entire book as a .pdf file. You can then go offline and read or search the .pdf file. Alternatively, you can use the ‘Item viewer’ facility to view the pages.
All of the above should be available for free consultation in BL Reading rooms at St Pancras.
2. Newspapers
The most recent, and largest, online database is the British Newspapers Archive. Some 9.5 million pages of 18th and 19th and 20th century newspapers have been scanned and are searchable.
http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
It is free to consult in BL St. Pancras reading rooms. Outside the Library, once you have registered and paid a subscription, it can be consulted anywhere where online access is available.
3. BL Music collections digitised and online
To find out what has been digitised, follow the links from:
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/music/britishlibrarymusiconline/digitisedmusic.html
4. BL map collections digitised and online
To find out what has been digitised, follow the links from:
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/webres/scanned/
5. BL Manuscripts digitised and online
To find out what has been digitised, search and follow the links from:
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm
6. Selected items that have been digitised by the British Library
BL online gallery – some 30,000 images digitised from a variety of BL collections
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/index.html
BL online exhibitions
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/index.html
BL ‘Turning the pages’/ virtual books.
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/virtualbooks/index.html
7. Endangered Archives Programme
http://eap.bl.uk/
8. Renaissance Festival Books
http://www.bl.uk/treasures/festivalbooks/homepage.html
9. The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online
http://idp.bl.uk/
10. BL Sound recordings
Read the background to the BL Sound Archive at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library_Sound_Archive
Only a small amount of recordings have been digitised. This is most probably due to copyright restrictions. In some ways, the development of websites such as Spotify (which has over 9 million recordings) might remove the need for the BL to seek funds to carry out large scale digitisation of recorded music.
To gain a view of what may be available, (digitised or not), see:
http://sounds.bl.uk/
11. UK Web Archiving
Activity in this area has been brought about by the rapid development of the Internet, and of thousands of websites that now use it to promote their services. The BL is in collaboration with the other UK national libraries to capture and archive the UK web domain content.
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/
The BL is constantly looking for ways to increase the amount of its collections that can be digitised. Within a few years, more listing will be necessary to update what is available.
Edmund M B King
January 2015
