§ Mr. SheermanTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how much funding her Department has allocated for(a) the long-term storage of the British Library's newspaper collection and (b) the archiving of digital material as required under the Legal Deposits Libraries Act 2003. [175968]
§ Estelle MorrisDCMS recognises the key storage needs of the British Library, and in SR 2002 set aside an extra amount of capital (£3 million in 2004–05 and £8 million in 2005–06) to help the British Library address this. The Department is aware of the British Library's bid for further resources to accelerate the programme of newspaper microfilm surrogate production and to manage digital materials. This is being considered as part of the 2004 Spending Review. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 allows for the possibility of archiving digital material; the precise manner in which this is done will be dependent on regulations which will be brought forward incrementally after consideration by an Advisory Panel.