Free access FindMyPast, & British Newspapers, this weekend (General)
by Jefff 
, West London, Middlesex, Friday, March 06, 2015, 02:14 (3544 days ago)
The Find My Past website are offering free access this weekend, starting noon today, Friday 6th March, until noon on Monday 9th. This offer will even benefit those who are already subscribers to this site. This will include free access to the British Newspaper Archives. It appears the only registration required is simply name and email, no need to give credit card details etc, so sounds well worth trying. By registering I assume one will also receive occasional Newsletter emails, from my experience these are interesting and not spam, it was thro such an email that I became aware of this offer.
Indeed, I have only recently completed full membership of the FMP site for a month for just £1, another offer I gained via their newsletters. I therefore strongly recommend registering with this site AND the BNA site too, thro which I have also just been offered another month's access for just £1. Subscribers to the regualr email newsletters from "Who Do You Think You Are magazine's website also received notice of this FMP offer.
A word of caution with this and all similar offers from any subscription companies eg Ancestry, BNA, GenesRenuited etc. To enable payment you must provide credit card info. PLEASE ensure as soon as the subscription starts you find the "My Account" page, and untick the box which permits automatic renewal. Failure to do so will mean the website will automatically take payment for a full subscription as soon as the free trial expires. To be fair, these companies will always refund any such payment if you report it soon enough, and you haven't used the site at all, but it's easier to tick the box and maybe make a calendar note to monitor the situation near the trial's expiry date.
access here http://www.findmypast.co.uk/freeweekend
"Free access lasts from 12:00pm midday (GMT) on Friday 6th March 2015 until 11:59am (GMT) on Monday 9th March 2015. To access the records you will need to be signed in at Findmypast: you can register for free using your name, email address and country of residence. The free access excludes the UK Electoral Registers (2002-2013) and the UK Companies House Directors (2002-2013) record sets. Current Findmypast Local subscribers (whilst they have an active Britain, Ireland, US & Canada or Australia & New Zealand subscription) will be able to access all World records (except those listed above) while the free access is live. Current Findmypast World subscribers (with active World subscriptions expiring after 11:59pm (GMT) on Friday 6th March 2015, excluding Findmypast Library accounts) will have an additional three days added on to their subscription. Free access is subject to our fair usage policy: each account may view up to a maximum of 1,000 records per day."
Happy Hunting !
Free access FindMyPast, & British Newspapers, this weekend
by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, March 06, 2015, 15:56 (3544 days ago) @ Jefff
I should probably have mentioned that, as well as Ancestry, free access to the FindMyPast website may also be available via your local public library.
I've not tried this for several months as our Library was closed for refit, but here in West London the FMP access was a no-frills version much like Ancestry Library Edition, and definitely did not offer the BNA newspaper access. However I understand that's now changed and the BNA site may now be free to access at any public libraries that offer FMP.
These links confirm this is probably the case in some if not all Glos libraries.
http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/libraries/vrl
http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=61345&p=0
If planning to access the BNA from the library, methodical and thorough searching of the BNA can be very time-consuming, so I recommend initially searching their site from home for free, needs no subscription, carefully logging the likely hits. As with many search engines, "less" often gives "more", vague searches may take longer but will often give relevant hits that over-specific searches (eg full names) will miss. This should help ensure that the limited time available in the library is well-spent in downloading those newspaper pages that you've already found from home, memory flash sticks are perfect for this.
see http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=36879
Re the FMP site itself, I particularly recommend it for anyone researching their ancestor's military history. In my experience it offers more datasets than Ancestry, for example, if researching the British Army during Victoria's many Colonial Wars up to the early 1900s. I've found very interesting records for Foresters who were just too old to serve in WW1.
Hoping this helps, Jeff.