NEWSPLAN West Midlands

History and Society Through Local Newspapers
in the West Midlands

What is Newsplan?

NEWSPLAN is a co-operative programme involving public libraries and archives in the UK, the British Library, the National Libraries of Scotland, Wales and Ireland and newspaper publishers.

Since the 1980s the NEWSPLAN programme has been listing, preserving and microfilming runs of local newspapers, both historic and recent, in each of the ten library and archive regions of the UK (and in Ireland) and in the national library collections. Previously unrecorded holdings of newspapers have been identified by the programme in this way. All kinds of information in newspapers have been conserved and made accessible to users and students by NEWSPLAN.

Each region has a local NEWSPLAN group and is also a member of the overall UK and Ireland NEWSPLAN Panel that helps co-ordinate the programme as a whole.

www.bl.uk/concord/linc/newsplan.html

The British Library Newspaper Library is the most comprehensive collection of national, local and overseas newspapers in the UK. The BLNL plays a considerable part in the NEWSPLAN programme.

www.bl.uk/collections/newspapers.html

Some of the titles in the NEWSPLAN West Midlands database are among the around 1600 local newspaper titles across the UK microfilmed for their improved preservation by the national NEWSPLAN 2000 Project. NEWSPLAN 2000 is sponsored by the Heritage Lottery Fund and by UK regional newspaper publishing groups.

www.newsplan2000.org

For further history of NEWSPLAN look at the British Library Newspaper Library information and for NEWSPLAN newsletters, conference proceedings and results of newspaper surveys look at the UK and Ireland NEWSPLAN Panel information.

The Newspaper Society represents and promotes the interests of the publishers of the UK’s regional and local press. It was founded in 1836 and is believed to be the oldest publishers’ association in the world. The Society has much helped NEWSPLAN and its members have provided important sponsorship for the NEWSPLAN 2000 Project.

www.newspapersoc.org.uk

Content © NEWSPLAN WM 2008
Searching Software © V3FM Ltd 2012