Publisher Digitisation Service

The British Library has launched a service that offers a ‘one-stop-shop’ for publishers who wish to digitise archival material from their journal collections. The Publisher Digitisation Service is said to draw on the breadth of the library’s collections as well as its expertise in converting large volumes of print material into digital format. According to the library, backfiles represent a substantial untapped asset for many publishers, especially if substantial portions of each title’s run remain in analogue format. And tracking down the content can be a challenge. Few publishers have maintained comprehensive archives of all their titles – current and defunct – and some have had to source as much as 75 per cent of their archival content from third parties in order to carry out digitisation. The British Library believes that, because of the vast extent of its serial collections, it can save publishers time and money in locating such material.