Online access to historical Manx newspapers to end

Access to digital copies of old newspaper titles published on the Isle of Man is set to come to an end on Monday.

Thousands of newspapers documenting more than 150 years on the island have been available to access through iMuseum for more than a decade.

However, Manx National Heritage (MNH), which holds the original copies in its collections, said the software and server used to provide digital access had become obsolete and would be switched off.

Head of collections at MNH, Kirsty Kneate, said the organisation was exploring options for a replacement system that would be both "robust" and "cost effective going into the future".

Originally a subscription service, access was made free during Covid and had remained so ever since.

The archive contains more than 400,000 pages of newsprint dating from 1792 to 1960.

Kneate said: "What we did in 2011, for a heritage organisation of our scale, was pretty exceptional.

"So what you will find is massive archives, like the British Library or massive newspaper archives, have digital access to their collections, but there are very few heritage organisations like ours that did the work that we did.

However, she said the company involved in providing the original service was now "pivoting away from our kind of archives", so the system is no longer supported.

Although it was not possible to put a timescale on implementing a replacement, she said MNH was "absolutely aware of how important and loved that particular aspect of our digital offering is".

Kneate was keen to stress that the original newspapers were "perfectly safe and held within our collections archive", and the digitised copies created in the early 2010s were "also safe and secure".

Online access had become popular with many people who used it as a resource for research projects, she said, and copies of the papers could still be viewed in person.

"People can come in and use microfilm in the library and archives to access particular issues," she said.

"I know it's not ideal, and I know I've had several people saying to me we're going backwards, but it is still a way for us to provide access."

She stressed the change would not affect any other collections available digitally, and maintained access through the platform was still among the organisation's priorities.

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