I recently wrote an article (still available at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/10/british-guardia.html) about 212 years of stories of the British Guardian and Observer newspapers becoming available online. To access the archives at no cost, you need to visit a library that subscribes to the archives. Access presumably will be free for the patron although the library does pay a subscription fee. A new announcement now says that anyone may access the same archives from home by paying a fee.
The archive, which is due to launch on 3 November, will be freely searchable online, but its content will only be accessible to subscribers paying £7.95 for 24 hours’ access, £14.95 for three days’ access, or £49.95 per month.
The first phase of the online archive will comprise every article from The Guardian from 1821 to 1975 and The Observer from 1900 to 1975. Observer stories published from 1791 to 1900 and after 1975, and Guardian stories from after 1975 are still being processed and will be added as soon as they are ready.
The service will be free until the end of November with a token from The Guardian or Observer newspaper. Access in the first month will be half price for other users.
£7.95 (about $16.00 U.S.) for 24 hours’ access strikes me as a bit expensive but it is still a lot cheaper than traveling to a subscribing library if there are none local to me. In my case, that might be a 3,000 mile trip.
