I can see that Gale is a commercial operation that is there to make a profit but the collection has been paid for by British taxpayers so should be made available to all UK libraries and academic sites without charge leaving Gale to charge US and other foreign academic users as much as they want. Probably the British Library has had their budget cut so have to make money out of Gale at the expense of other British libraries and academic establishments. Martin Briscoe Fort William M&LFHS | Gwynedd FHS > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of judy olsen > Sent: 18 March 2008 12:45 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [ENG-LAN-BOLTON] Gale Newspaper Service > > This material is not free and isn't - or wasn't - already > digitised. > Before fragile and rare material like this can made available > online a heck of a lot of money has to be spent on digitising > it, and creating a database. Libraries tend not to have the > funds or the staff so they go into various types of > partnership with outfits like Gale........