Up to 40 million pages of the British Library’s newspaper archive are to be digitized and made available on internet.

The British Library said its planned move would save researchers from making long trips to the newspaper library at Colindale in north London. It would also help to preserve the wear and tear items.

Presently, the newspaper pages are available only bound in bulky volumes or on microfilms.

The British Library's CEO Dame Lynne Brindley said that the move would help the newspaper collection to remain relevant for a new generation of researchers.

The digital form of the newspapers would be free to users on British Library’s site; otherwise a charge would be levied.

The project will take around 10 years to complete and the cost of converting a single page into a digital copy of it would costs up to £1.

The British Library possesses nearly 750 million historic newspaper pages, which are an invaluable resource for historians, researchers and others.