Midland News Association, publisher of the Express & Star and Shropshire Star, is partnering Legacy.com to launch an interactive online death notice service.

The system, which will appear on the MNA websites expressandstar.com and shropshirestar.com, will bring family notices online to readers locally and around the world.

People are already able to place tributes and pictures on the websites, which host online guest books to allow family and friends to express their condolence and share memories.

Each year, MNA publishes in excess of 48,000 death and related notices in the group's newspapers. The Shropshire Star covers Shropshire and Mid-Wales, while the Express and Star covers the West Midlands and the Black Country.

New media manager David Ratcliffe said: "With our online traffic continuing to grow, we wanted to provide our web users with a fully interactive death notice service.

"While our core audience is local to the MNA print titles' regions, our sites attract thousands of visitors from across the UK and around the world. We wanted to find the right service to allow this wide audience to pay tribute to loved ones."

More than 550 newspaper titles use Legacy, including the Manchester Evening News, the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.