Collection Moves News Bulletin
November 2012
Newspaper Storage Building
approaches milestone
The vast new storage facility for
the national newspaper collection,
currently being built at Boston
Spa in West Yorkshire, is rapidly
approaching its fi rst major milestone.
At the end of November the
construction contactor, Kier
Northern, will complete work on
the exterior shell of the Newspaper
Storage Building (NSB). The building
will then be handed over to the
automation contractor, TGW, which
will start to install the racking and
automation system that will in future
house the Library’s print newspaper
collection, currently held at Colindale.
The British Library’s new CEO Roly
Keating toured the site in September.
He posted an image of the cavernous
interior of the automation void on
Twitter, describing the project as
“awe-inspiring”. Since then, the
bulk of activity has moved inside
the building and plant rooms, as
mechanical and electrical works
have proceeded.
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Installation of the racking and
automation will continue until the
end of next summer. Following the
completion of rigorous testing of the
system, print newspapers will start to
go into the NSB in autumn 2013.
“We’ve made remarkable progress
during the course of this year,” says
Chris Fletcher, Project Manager for
the NSB Construction Project. “The
roof and external cladding of the
automation void are now complete,
as are the stairways contained
within each of the two towers on the
northern elevation of the building.
Some minor works in the support
building and the plant rooms are
being fi nished off and the external
works are substantially complete.”
The NSB will provide fully
environmentally-controlled storage
conditions for the 750 million pages
of newspapers that comprise the
British Library newspaper collection.
Along with temperature and humidity
controls, the building will also have a
state-of-the-art low-oxygen system in
the storage void, eliminating the risk
of fi re – a key concern when storing
such a large amount of newsprint.
“The oxygen reduction equipment is
being installed right now,” continues
Chris. “It’s a similar system to the
one already in use in the Additional
Storage Building (ASB) at Boston Spa,
so we have a good understanding of
the technology. There’s no comparison
with the newspaper storage areas at
Colindale, which are outdated and
offer little in the way of environmental
controls.”
As previously reported, the NSB
construction is a key element of the
Library’s wide-ranging Newspaper
Programme, which aims to safeguard
the long-term future of the national
newspaper collection by moving the
print collection out of Colindale and
into the archival-standard conditions
that the NSB will provide. Access
to the collection will be via digital
and microfi lm copies in a dedicated
Reading Room at St Pancras; where
no ‘surrogate’ copy exists, it will be
possible to request the print originals
from Boston Spa.
If you have any enquiries, please
contact: [email protected]
12/11/2012 10:34
The future of News
at St Pancras
A new suite of moving image
services is currently being piloted in
the Reading Rooms at St Pancras,
Colindale and Boston Spa. The pilot
includes a searchable archive of
thousands of hours of broadcast news
content, a prototype for the kind of
service that will be included in the
planned News Reading Room at St
Pancras from early 2014.
Broadcast News provides access to
off-air recordings of television and
radio news programmes from 17
channels (15 TV, two radio) airing in
the UK since May 2010. Around 46
hours of news are recorded every day
from channels including BBC, ITV,
Channel 4, Sky News, Al-Jazeera
English, NHK World, CNN, France
24, Bloomberg, Russia Today and
China’s CCTV News. Many of the
programmes come with subtitles,
which are word-searchable, making
Broadcast News an especially effective
research resource.
In addition to Broadcast News, the
Library is also piloting a BBC TV
and radio service, which features
BBC programmes recorded off-air
from mid-2007 to the end of 2011.
It includes around 2.2 million
catalogue records and 190,000
playable programmes.
Alongside these resources, users can
also fi nd TRILT – a listings database
which covers every channel, broadcast
and repeat and contains some 15
million records – with comprehensive
coverage since 2001 and selective
records dating back to 1995. TRILT
is regularly used by many universities
but this is the fi rst time it has been
made available to more general users.
“We’ve offered access to our specialist
moving image collections as an
appointment service before now,” says
Luke McKernan the Library’s Lead
Curator of Moving Image. “But the
pilot service makes available a huge
new range of archive content – and
will be of interest not only to people
studying the media and current affairs
but across all academic disciplines.”
service which is now available – and
which will launch in full in the New
Year – gives Readers a fi rst glimpse
of our ambitions to make multimedia
content available alongside other news
media, including digitised newspapers,
microfi lm and, where necessary, print
originals. When the planned News
Reading Room opens, the year after
next, we hope to enable new ways of
researching across all types of media
– allowing people to access and use
newspaper content under same roof as
the Library’s other collections for the
fi rst time ever.”
You can provide feedback on the
pilot service by completing a survey
at: http://www.bl.uk/surveys/
soundandmovingimage/index.html
Patrick Fleming, Head of Operations
and Services, London, says: “The pilot
How the moves will affect you
The timetable for moving the
newspaper collection has been
phased to minimise the amount
of time that large parts of the
collection are unavailable – but
given the scale and complexity
of the moves, some disruption
is inevitable.
This outline schedule indicates
when users may expect collections
to become unavailable – you may
wish to prioritise your research
accordingly. Each move will be
preceded by an embargo period
to allow the collection to be
prepared for moving.
Late spring 2013 – low-use
periodicals held at Colindale will be
embargoed, prior to being moved
to the existing Additional Storage
Building (ASB) at Boston Spa,
West Yorkshire. The move of this
material is expected to take around
four months, with items becoming
available for ordering once more in
autumn 2013.
Early autumn 2013 – high-use
periodicals, microfi lm collections,
print newspapers and Newspaper
Reading Room reference collections
will be embargoed, prior to large
scale moves. At this stage the
Colindale Reading Room will close.
Winter 2013-14 – Moves of microfilm
collections to St Pancras are
anticipated to take around six weeks.
Once these are complete, a dedicated
Newspaper Reading Room will
open at St Pancras, providing access
to microfilm, digitised newspapers
and reference materials from the old
Reading Room. High-use periodicals
are also expected to become available
at St Pancras at this point.
Moves of the bulk of the print
collection are anticipated to continue
into summer 2014, although elements
of these collections are expected to
be made available on a phased basis
once they are ingested into the NSB.
If you have any enquiries, please contact: [email protected]. The next issue of the Collection Moves News Bulletin will
appear in January 2013.
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