Two recent digitisation projects have got big dollops of publicity on the mainstream media

The Complete Works of Charles Darwin I have mentioned before, but it was the newly expanded Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 that really hit the headlines.

The site featured in numerous national newspapers, magazines such as the Economist, radio and, perhaps the best way of getting users interested, a link from the BBC website home page.

Of course, success does not come without its teething problems. Both the Darwin and Old Bailey websites had hiccups in service provision because of the excessive number of hits. But this is a small price to play (and perhaps one that can be eliminated with suitable load testing) for getting such good publicity.