News

British Periodicals Collections I and II - Free

Date: 19-January-2009 

Massive archive which traces the development of the British periodical press over the last two centuries is made available free to the UK academic community.

Massive archive which traces the development of the British periodical press over the last two centuries is made available free to the UK academic community.

ProQuest and JISC Collections have today finalised a new agreement to make a digital archive of nearly 500 periodicals covering the arts, the built environment, humanities and social sciences available free in perpetuity to universities, research councils and colleges in the UK – British Periodicals Collections I and II.  JISC Collections’ purchase of the archive on behalf of these institutions means they can enjoy free access via ProQuest’s web platform to more than 250 years of content, which represents some 6 million pages.

British Periodicals Collections I and II traces the development and growth of the periodical press in Britain from its origins in the seventeenth century through to the Victorian "age of periodicals" and beyond.  A wide array of different types of periodical are represented in the Collections, from magisterial quarterlies and scholarly and professional organs through to coterie art periodicals, penny weeklies and illustrated family magazines.

Although scholars in a variety of disciplines have long understood the usefulness of periodical literature of this kind as source material for research and teaching, the original works are often difficult to access in the physical world.  For example these materials are rare or because the physical copies are held by only one or two libraries and access to them involves travel or inter-library loan.  JISC Collections’ purchase of British Periodicals I and II at a national level makes it possible for all university libraries to provide their staff and students with essential primary research material.

British Periodicals Collections I and II provides scholars at with new ways of accessing and investigating the periodical record and of locating source materials relevant to their chosen study or research topic.  Users can also bookmark articles or images individually and the JISC Collections licence allows them to incorporate extracts from articles, reviews as well as map images and cartoons in course reading lists and VLEs.

Here’s what some of your colleagues have been saying about the value of British Periodicals Collections I and II to education and research:

“Such a collection is of immense value for staff and postgraduate research. This is the case not only for literary studies, my own specialism, but in many other areas of work such as social history, gender studies, politics etc. It will also allow for the creation of some new undergraduate courses tied to the collection.

I cannot see any reason why any serious university would NOT want to have it.  I think the inclusion of the collection British Periodicals Collections I and II in the Creative Arts is a very major plus. The more multi-disciplinary the better.”
Dr Glyn Pursglove, Reader in English, Swansea University

“Many texts taught in British universities today originated in the periodical press, which also reviewed and advertised them.  In itself, the press is a vivid representation of culture of all classes.  British Periodicals Collections I and II is an unparalleled resource – visual and verbal -- in its breadth and number of titles (1681–1937), from political weeklies to weighty quarterlies to women’s magazines to the popular press.  Fiction-rich monthlies, comic papers and illustrated magazines are to be found in this expanding, full-text resource of over 460 titles, and a broad range of disciplines is covered: architecture, art, drama, economics, history, literature, music, politics, psychology, religion, science, and social science.  Covers, adverts and illustrations help historicise and materially locate the letterpress.

British PeriodicalsCollections I and II may be browsed as well as searched, and users can read whole issues page by page as well as discrete articles.  Well-known titles are here, such as the Athenaeum, Belgravia, Blackwood’s, the Dublin Review, the Edinburgh Review, Figaro in London, Fun, the Gentleman’s Magazine, Home and Foreign Review, Household Words, the Irish Quarterly Review, Judy, La Belle Assemble, Macmillan’s, the Magazine of Art, the Penny Magazine, the Savoy, the Spectator, the Westminster Review, and the Yellow Book, as well as the less familiar Hobby Horse, Leisure Hour, the Midwife, the New Sporting Magazine, Play Pictorial, the Reader, Tait’s, the Violin, and the Yorkshire Freeholder.  The richness of this collection for students and scholars cannot be overstated.”

Laurel Brake, Emeritus Professor of Literature and Print Culture, Birkbeck, University of London and Director ncse Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition

Institutions with access to Periodicals Archive Online (which is also part of the JISC Collections UK National Academic Archive and free of charge to the UK academic community) are able to cross-search titles in both British Periodicals Collections I and II and Periodicals Archive Online.  This provides users with simultaneous access to hundreds of historical periodicals, as well as the more current literature about those authors and topics in Periodicals Archive Online’s journals from one search.

Universities and Research Councils wanting access to British Periodicals Collections I and II will need to complete a licence agreement. For further information, please go to http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/british_periodicals