DUNDEE, Scotland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--brightsolid online technology is celebrating the successful launch of the British Newspaper Archive, one of the UK’s largest-ever digitisation projects, which saw 1.2m searches of its vast resources within the first 24 hours.
The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk), a collaboration between brightsolid and the British Library, transforms the way that people use historical newspapers for research, with four million pages of the Library’s newspaper collection online for the first time.
It received significant media attention from major UK and US television networks, and over 400 news outlets around the world.
brightsolid Online Technology confirmed that the first day saw over 1.2 million searches across the 4 million pages available, drawn mainly from 19th Century regional newspapers. The second phase of the project has already started, and will see a further 36 million pages made available over the next nine years – at a rate of 8,000 pages (enough newspaper to cover a football pitch) every working day.
brightsolid Online Technology was chosen by the British Library due to its track record of delivering on projects of this scale, such as Scotland’s 2011 Census and the digitisation of the historic 1911 Census, which successfully operated under significant peak demands while protecting the nation’s personal data.
The British Newspaper Archive is fully searchable and uses the latest digitisation techniques, including Optical Character Recognition software, which offers extensive image enhancement and a highly automated procedure for extracting text, structure recognition and descriptive metadata. The scanners used in the process make it possible to digitise even the most fragile material into the highest quality digital images.
Over 500 terabytes of storage is used to store the archive data at launch, designed to up-scale with the continued growth in the archive. The latest tiered storage techniques are used with a combination of SATA and Solid State Drives to store the archive and run the site while ensuring the highest levels of security of personal data.
Richard Higgs, Managing Director of brightsolid Online Technology, commented: “The successful delivery of this unique project has involved some of the the latest technical innovations to help bring history to life. The brightsolid solution coped brilliantly with the significant demand on the first day, and that seamless launch is a credit to the hard work put in by the team. “
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