The Irish Newspaper Archive, a privately-owned commercial database offering access to some 40 Irish titles, is gearing up to dramatically reduce the cost of its subscription packages.
The new 'individual researcher' rates are not yet set in stone, but are expected to be somewhere in the ballpark of:
One Day : €9.99 (currently €10, so not exactly a headline grabber)
One Month : €29.99 (currently €60)
One Year : €179.99 (currently €350)
The existing 48-hour and 7-day packages will be discountinued.
The announcement of imminent big price cuts was made by director Phillip Martin in the final lecture at Back To Our Past 2014. What a great note for the show to end on!
News of the changes hasn't reached the IrishNewsArchive website yet because the figures are not yet confirmed and the new regime will not be introduced until the tail-end of November, Phillip told Irish Genealogy News today. He also advised that new titles, all covering Mayo, have been added to the database in the last month:
Ballinrobe Chronicle 03/02/1866 - 10/09/1903
Ballina Herald 06/08/1927 - 28/04/1962
Mayo Examiner 06/07/1868 - 30/12/1876
Mayo News 07/01/1893 - 29/12/2004
Western Journal 03/06/1977 - 11/03/1983
In addition, all issues for the Leinster Express from 1831 to 1877 should be available before the end of the year, and all issues of the Sligo Champion, currently online from 1950 to 1981, should, from early 2015, be available up to the current year.
There's also another major title ready to join the Irish News Archive shortly. It's under wraps right now, but more than 100 years of this publication (the span starts pre-Famine) will be uploaded in the next couple of months. I'll bring you news of the launch in due course.
NOTE: This blogpost was edited at 17:10pm.