More than 3.2 million digitized pages newspaper available in the Royal Library of Belgium

In 2006 – in the context of the plan for digitizing the heritage of the federal scientific institutions – the Royal Library of Belgium received the instruction to digitize a representative selection 19^th and 20^th century Belgian newspapers (cost price: 4,5 million euro).

No less than 3.2 million pages from 70 Belgian newspapers from the years 1831-1950 are, starting from now,  digitally available.

The benefits of digitizing newspapers are on one hand preservation: newspapers are published on very vulnerable paper. Once digitized there is no more need to manipulate the newspapers that much. On the other hand it becomes much easier to search in the newspapers, thanks to the OCR-technology (‘optical character recognition’).

The newspapers were chosen for their creation date, language, place of publication, ideological and philosophical orientation. 3.2 million pages seems to be a lot, but it is only 5% of the total number of newspapers of the Royal Library. Because of copyright, you only can consult the newspapers in a  special room in the Library.

Source: http://www.faronet.be/nieuws/koninklijke-bibliotheek-stelt-meer-dan-32-miljoen-gedigitaliseerde-krantenpagina%E2%80%99s-online-bes

Source photo: http://www.brusselsmuseums.be/nl/musea/11-koninklijke-bibliotheek-van-belgië

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Website Europeana Newspapers online

The website of the “Europeana Newspapers” project is online. Over the next three years, 17 European institutions (mostly national libraries) have joined forces to provide more than 10 million newspaper pages to Europeana. There will be a special focus on newspapers published during the First World War. In addition, this project addresses challenges particularly linked with digitizing newspapers, for example the refinement of methods for OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Source: Europeana Newspapers

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A Gateway to European Newspapers

A group of 17 European partner institutions have joined forces in the “European Newspapers” project and will, over the next 3 years, provide more than 10 million newspaper pages to the EUROPEANA service.

The European Newspapers project (funded under EC’s CIP 2007 – 2013) aims at the aggregation and refinement of newspapers for The European Library and Europeana. In addition, the project addresses challenges particularly linked with digitized newspapers:

• use of refinement methods for OCR, OLR/article segmentation, and named entity recognition (NER), and page class recognition to enhance search and presentation functionalities for Europeana customers,

• quality evaluation for automatic refinement technologies, 

• transformation of local metadata to the Europeana Data Model (EDM) 

• metadata standardization in close collaboration with stakeholders from the public and private sector. 

Each library participating in the project will distribute digitized newspapers and full-texts free of any legal restrictions to Europeana. There will be a special focus on newspapers published during the First World War, thus providing a meaningful addition to the resources aggregated by the current Europeana Collections 1914-1918 project. 

The project has started on 1st February 2012. The kick-off meeting of all partners of the project will take place on 1st – 2nd March 2012 in Berlin, hosted by the project leader – The Berlin State Library.

Source tekst: LIBER

Source image: Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek

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British Library scans newspapers

Four million pages of newspapers from the 18th and 19th Centuries have been made available online by the British Library. The public will now be able to scan the content of 200 titles from around Britain and Ireland. These will include historic events such as the wedding of Victoria and Albert and the rise of the railways. The archive is free to search, but there is a charge for accessing the pages themselves. Other stories contained within the scanned pages include reporting on the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15932683

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Dutch Royal Library expands Historical Newspapers with post-war papers

TheRoyal Library of the Netherlands has expanded its webdienst Historische Kranten (webservice Historical Newspapers) with an extra 500,000 pages, thereby offering a total of two million pages. The papers, spanning four centuries, are from all over the Netherlands, Suriname and the Caribbean. For the first time, there are also some post-war papers available, such as the Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, the Amigoe di Curaçao and the Juinensche courant. The Royal Library has switched to new software, so the site’s performance has improved as well. Till the end of next year, the site will be expanded from two to nine million pages.

Source: http://www.vlaamse-erfgoedbibliotheek.be/nieuws/2011/09/2038-kb-den-haag-breidt-webdienst-historische-kranten-uit

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digitilisation of newspapers through Metamorfoze-subsidising

In 2006 the Royal Library of the Netherlands launched the ‘Databank Digitale Dagbladen’ (‘Digital Newspapers Database’), a project where Dutch newspapers – be it national, regional, local or even colonial – are digitilised en masse. Eight million pages have thus already found their way online, from the first paper published in 1618 to modern-day newspapers from the twentieth century.

At the end of 2010, Metamorfoze (The Nationaal Programma voor het Behoud van Papieren Erfgoed, the National Programme for the Preservation of Paper Heritage)  started susidising the Library for the Project ‘Behoud Nederlandse Dagbladen 1869-1940′ (Preservation of Dutch Newspapers 1869-1940). An estimated 1.35 million extra pages are thus preserved, digitilised and made available online via a national web platform.

For the digitilisation of newspapers, there will be an extra auction in the course of 2011. That year will therefor be used for selection, loan, and the start-up for preparation of materials. In 2012, digitilising should start. You can check out the pages that have already been put online at http://kranten.kb.nl.

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400 years of Dutch newspapers online

Web service with historical newspapers is an important source of information for historians, genealogists, journalists, and language researchers. The Royal Library of the Netherlands digits a large part of all national, regional, local and colonial newspapers which were published between 1618 and 1995.

Since 27 of May 2010 the first part of one million pages is accessible at kranten.kb.nl . It contains more than 70 different newspapers. The other seven million pages arrive in the next eighteen months. The web service is the largest, free, accessible online newspapers database in the world and is a part of the intention of the KB to make about 10% of all Dutch books, newspapers and magazines available digitally.

Source: http://www.informatieprofessional.nl  01.06.2010 IP Flash

We put a link to this database from our Web site at newspapers.

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Digital camera

In the Kleine Leeszaal you can use a digital camera. In order to improve the quality of the shots we placed the camera on a stand with extra lighting.

 

The camera is useful for shots of large formatted documents like newspapers, which you are not allowed to copy.

 

This facility is free to use. Making an appointment is advised.

 

The camera is connected to a computer carrying software to adjust the shots and to store it on a data carrier.

 

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