The largest single online collection of English news media from the 17th and
18th centuries - the Burney Collection - is now available free of charge for the
first time to Higher and Further Education institutions and Research Councils across
the UK.
The Burney Collection offers unique insights into two centuries of history through
access to over 1,270 newsbooks, newspapers, pamphlets and a variety of other news
materials published in England, Ireland and Scotland, plus papers from British colonies
in the Americas and Asia.
Digitised through a partnership between the National Science Foundation and the
British Library, and then developed and hosted online by Gale/Cengage Learning,
the digital version of the Burney Collection has been purchased in perpetuity by
JISC Collections on behalf of the UK academic and research community at a national
level following an open and transparent procurement process.
Until now, access to the Burney Collection has been restricted - both in print
and online. The corpus of printed materials - originally collected by the Reverend
Charles Burney (1757-1817) and greatly augmented since its acquisition - has been
housed at the British Library but, due to its value and fragility, it has not been
available for general use. In addition, the cost of acquiring online access to the
Collection has been beyond the means of the majority of institutions.
As a result of this important new agreement, an unlimited number of students
and researchers at academic institutions across the UK can now access these essential
materials simultaneously - from wherever they are 24/7. This will have very significant
benefits for research and education and, available free of charge to all institutions,
equality of access is also assured.
The complete Collection (including illustrations) is fully cross searchable,
and granular metadata plus an extensive range of search and browse options opens
up unrivalled and exciting research possibilities.
To access the collection, librarians should visit:
http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/