TRAWLING through yellowing newsprint in Colindale may soon be a thing of the past after two million archived pages were transferred online this week.

The British Library has put its entire 19th Century collection from 49 national and regional newspapers onto the internet.

Visitors accessing the service will now be able to view historic papers such as the Manchester Times, Western Mail and Penny Illustrated from the privacy of their own homes.

Users can read Charles Dicken's parliamentary sketches, or Williams Russell's dispatches from the front line of the Crimean War, as they appeared on the breakfast tables of Victorian Britain.

Any bankers accessing the new service might also be relieved to read about the 1878 banking collapse, showing that economic crashes are not unique to the 21st Century.

Ed King, head of the collection, said: "It is very easy to use compared to what users have to do now. At the moment you have to go to Colindale and go through the papers page by page.

"With this you can enter key words and date ranges and refine the search progressively."

Simon Fowler, editor of Ancestors Magazine, said: “This new service really does open up a major new resource for family historians.

"Realistically for the first time it is possible to use newspapers to complement other records to build up a rounder portrait of our ancestors, with information that would not be possible to obtain elsewhere."

Catherine Hall, professor of modern British social history at University College London, said she was excited about the new service, but had some reservations.

"All researchers are thrilled about this," she told the Today programme on BBC's Radio Four yesterday.

"It's a great development and part of a wider democratisation of knowledge. For students, researchers and people who want to explore family histories, it opens up all kinds of possibilities.

"But it is not the same as viewing the real pages. That is the contradictory bit about it.

"If you search key words you go straight to the piece of information that you want and you don't see it in its wider context.

"That makes a huge difference."

Anyone wishing to read the original copies will still be welcome at the library, in Colindale Avenue, but they are encouraged to use the web service.

Searches of the site are free and downloads of full-text articles are available by buying either a 24-hour or seven-day pass.

The 24-hour pass for 100 articles costs £6.99 and the seven-day pass for 200 articles costs £9.99.

Access to The Graphic and The Penny Illustrated Paper is free.

The online archive can be found at newspaper.bl.uk