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The Scotsman launched the first phase of its extensive digital archive last week, providing a fully searchable archive of every Scotsman newspaper from 1817 to 1900.

Colleges, universities and institutions are expected to be the main audience for the archive, with consumers making up around 20 to 30 per cent of revenue.

During its first day online, the archive had pricing requests from eight universities, four libraries and museums and three local authorities, as well as universities in Australia and Canada.

"Everyone was quite taken aback by the targets we set ourselves in terms of quality - basically searchability and readability of the archive," said Alistair Brown, head of online operations at the Scotsman.

"However, we stuck to our guns and have achieved or exceeded our targets - despite the fact that at times we have been working with badly degraded or poorly printed material.

"We believe the service is world class - easy to use and offers good value for money."

Research for the project began in summer 2003 and the archive was compiled in 2004. The Scotsman worked with specialist firm UK Archiving and Olive Software to develop the archive.

The team compiled the archive by refilming more than 600,000 pages of the Scotsman's entire original newspaper archive. Where editions were in poor condition, records were used from the collections of Edinburgh University, St Andrews University and Edinburgh City Library. The entire archive was then digitised, content categorised and converted to PDF format.

The site is offering several reduced rates for archive access until January 2005, starting at £5.95 for a 24-hour pass.

The web team are working on the next phase of the archive which will include editions up to 1950, and then up to the present day.

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