Inspiration from the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program

Most everyone's doing it. On 25 July the Australian Newspapers Beta service launched with 70,000 out of copyright newspaper pages from 1803 onwards. Additional pages are to be added each week.

The service, an initiative of the National Library of Australia, in collaboration the Australian State and Territory libraries, currently includes incomplete runs from:

The Argus, daily, Melbourne, 1915-19 and 1945 available
The Canberra Times, 1926-1929
The Courier-Mail, daily, Brisbane, 1933-34
Perth Gazette and Western Australian journal, daily, 1833-1847
The Mercury, daily, Hobart, 1916-1917
The Maitland mercury, and Hunter River general advertiser, New South Wales, 1843-1855 and 1880-1883
The South Australian advertiser, a daily newspaper, 1858-1861
The Sydney Gazette, the first newspaper in Australia, 1803-1815.

I like the approach. It's a cooperative project with national leadership. Content is free and being made available as digitization progresses. Although the material available for the beta is limited there is a measure of accountability in that the schedule for future scanning is made public.

Progress on Library and Archives Canada's equivalent program, following their National Consultation in 2002, is detailed here!

via Resource Shelf