GBP33m saves the world's greatest newspaper collection for the nation (UK)

"The British Library has today received a commitment of GBP33m from the Government to preserve and make accessible the world's greatest newspaper collection. The money was announced by the Prime Minister today as one of a number of capital projects for the cultural and creative industries. The British Library collects a copy of every local, regional and national newspaper published in the UK, plus 250 international titles. This unparalleled newspaper collection is an unique resource of over 750 million pages and is used for research by 30,000 people - genealogists, local historians and researchers from the creative industries - every year. The collection is used as source material for countless new books, newspapers, television programmes, films, documentaries, academic papers, local history projects and family trees in the UK every year, making a vital contribution to the UK economy. However the collection is currently housed in dilapidated conditions in Colindale in North London where 15% of the collection is already beyond use and 19% is in peril. The GBP33m investment will allow the collection to be moved to a state of the art storage facility in Yorkshire while allowing digital and microfilm access to the collection from the British Library's flagship building at St Pancras in London"