Collection Moves News Bulletin
October 2013
Colindale closure date approaches
– plans for St Pancras take shape
early December in the Reading
Room on Floor 2 at St Pancras,
where BIPC2 is currently located.
The room will be remodelled and
refitted to provide a vastly improved
experience for researchers using
newspaper collections.
The British Library’s newspaper
moves programme is now well
advanced. Since the embargo on
periodical titles began in June, the
bulk of such material – amounting
to 160,000 individual volumes –
has been moved to its new home
at the Library’s Boston Spa site in
West Yorkshire.
The Newspaper Storage Building
(NSB) at Boston Spa is substantially
complete and testing of the automated
storage system is currently underway.
In parallel, designs are being finalised
for the dedicated News and Media
Reading Room, which is due to open
in St Pancras in March.
The next major milestone for the
programme is the closure of the
Newspaper Reading Room at
Colindale, which will take place on
Friday 8 November. As described in
the June issue of the Collection
Moves News Bulletin, this is when
print newspapers, microfilm and a
small number of high-use periodical
titles will be withdrawn from use so
that they can be prepared for moving
to Boston Spa (newspapers) or St
Pancras (microfilm and reference
materials held on open-access shelves).
Both the preparation of the print
newspaper collection for travelling,
and the ingest of this material into
the purpose-built NSB facility at
Boston Spa are hugely complex
logistical and technical undertakings.
Print newspapers are therefore
expected to become available again in
autumn 2014 , at which point people
will be able to request them in the
News and Media Reading Room in
St Pancras, where they will be
delivered within 48 hours, if no
surrogate copy exists and if they are
in good enough condition to travel.
In the meantime, construction and
refurbishment work will begin in
“Fundamentally, the Library’s
newspaper programme is about
improving the storage and
preservation of the national
newspaper collection, moving fragile
newspapers out of the outdated
facility at Colindale and into a
fully environmentally-controlled
building at Boston Spa,” says Patrick
Fleming, Head of Reader and
Reference Services. “But it’s also
about transforming the experience of
researchers using the collection from
a mid-20th century type of experience
to something more appropriate to the
21st century and the digital age.
“Not only are the storage conditions
at Colindale far from adequate, the
access facilities have also been pretty
basic, with paper-based ordering
systems, outdated viewing equipment
for microfilm and only the most
rudimentary catering and amenities.
By contrast, the News and Media
Reading Room will offer a research
environment that is bang up to
date, along with improved facilities
including more than 100 desks for
people consulting newspaper and
media collections, 40 digital
microfilm readers, and the most
heavily-used microfilm collections
available on open access.
Patrick adds, “We’ve consulted
with current users of the newspaper
collections – including family history
researchers, academic researchers and
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journalists – and their feedback has
been built into the design of the News
and Media Reading Room. Crucially,
we’ve also surveyed Library users to
try to assess what their future research
needs may be – particularly so we can
plan for how people may search across
several different collections, which is
clearly one of the great advantages of
having access to newspaper collections
finally under the same roof as access to
all our other collections.”
When it opens in March 2014, the
News and Media Reading Room will
offer access to microfilm copies of
newspapers, which were previously
held at Colindale, along with open
access reference collections relating
to news. Periodical collections will
become available again at the same
time and may be consulted in any of
the St Pancras Reading Rooms.
“We were initially hoping to open the
News and Media Reading Room next
February,” adds Patrick, “but as we’ve
worked with the architect to confirm
the detailed specification of the new
facility, it’s become clear that March
is a more realistic date. We hope that
Readers will bear with us while we
make these very significant changes.
While this is a long-term strategy and
the benefits for future generations of
researchers will be considerable, the
researchers of today will also benefit
from a much-improved research
environment and an ever-increasing
proportion of our collection that can
be accessed and explored digitally,
whether on-site or from a location
more convenient to them.”
Following the closure of Colindale,
digital resources such as the
British Newspaper Archive
www.britishnewspaperarchive.
co.uk will continue to be available
in all the British Library’s Reading
Rooms (see After Colindale closes,
right). Additional detail on the moves
programme and previous issues of this
newsletter can be found at:
If you have any enquiries, please
contact: [email protected]. The next
issue of the Collection Moves News
Bulletin will appear in January 2014.
After Colindale closes –
resources available
Between the closure of the Colindale
Reading Room on 8 November
and the opening of the News and
Media Reading Room at St Pancras
next March, a range of newspaper
resources will continue to be available
via the other Reading Rooms at
St Pancras.
Colindale users who currently have
a Newspaper Library Reader Pass
are therefore strongly encouraged
to upgrade to a full British Library
Reader Pass, which they will need
in order to access the collections
held at St Pancras. You can find full
information about registering for a
British Library Reader Pass at:
www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/
register/stpregister.html
Resources that can be consulted in
any of the Reading Rooms include
the British Newspaper Archive
www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
which features nearly 7 million
searchable pages of newspapers from
across the UK.
The British Library also subscribes
to a range of electronic newspaper
resources, including extended runs
of The Times, the Daily Mail, the
Daily Mirror, The Guardian, the
Illustrated London News, the New
York Times, the Times of India, the
Financial Times, The Scotsman,
The Irish Times and the 17th and
18th century Burney Collection. Full
details of these subscription titles can
be found at: www.bl.uk/eresources/
newspapers/colindale2.html
Readex provides access to selected
historical newspaper collections – see:
https://eresources.remote.bl.uk:2443/
login
Microfilm materials available from
specific Reading Rooms include:
Pre-1801 London newspapers (Rare
Books and Music), The Times 1785
– present (Humanities 2) and South
Asian newspapers (Asian and African
Studies). The Asian and African
Studies Reading Room also offers
access to print newspapers in Asian
and Middle-Eastern languages,
including those published in the UK
and received via legal deposit.
Additional details on these holdings
and alternative holdings in other
libraries can be found in a Q&A
which can be viewed at:
www.bl.uk/newspaper-moves
For continuing updates on the
newspaper moves programme, please
also follow the Reference Services
Twitter feed:
www.twitter.com/BL_Ref_Services
Tours of St Pancras for Colindale users
A second round of tours of the St
Pancras site for people who currently
use Colindale took place at the end of
September and the beginning of this
month. The tours were well-attended
and a range of questions that were
asked have fed into the Q&A
documents that are now available on
the Newspaper Moves webpage.
Around a dozen users attended
each of the tours, which followed
a previous round that took place
earlier in the year. Further tours will
take place following the closure of
Colindale – timings and dates will
be announced on the website and via
social media.