In partnership with the British Library, both the BritishNewspaperArchive.co.uk (BNA) and FindMyPast have made more than a million newspaper pages from 158 titles completely free to search and view. They date from 1720 to 1880 and cover a diverse array of histories, locations and topics. You can view a list of the titles, and the years of coverage, in the BNA announcement, here (scroll down).
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| Options on the BNA site |
Perhaps some Irish papers will be included in the next instalment of free titles. Exactly when this second tranche will land has not been advised, only that the freebie holding will be expanded by more than 2.7 million pages over the next four years.
In the meantime, if you want to search the existing freebies, you'll need an account (not a subscription) with either the BNA or FindMyPast. You can set up the account on either database, and should look out for the Free To View option when you start to search using your keywords.
On the BNA, this is very straightforward (see image above). It can be a little more difficult on FindMyPast, but if you look at the short video below, it'll be a cinch.
To start searching the free newspapers, use one of the links below. In each case, the landing page has already filtered to the Free To View option:
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