With its 40 million pages, the British Newspaper Archive is one of the largest newspaper digitization projects worldwide
Whether eye-witness reports on the Battle of Waterloo, a detailed report of Queen Victoria’s coronation in the year 1838 or more general day-to-day occurrences such as wedding announcements, recipes or advertisements: The Newspaper Archive of the British Library is a unique historic collection of source material from the 18th and 19th centuries. The internationally renowned library and brightsolid Online Publishing will be making around 40 million pages accessible to a wider public via the internet over the next ten years. The high-end book scanner technology from the Tübingen-based company Zeutschel is also involved in making this possible. http://www.zeutschel.de
Tübingen, February 2012 – The British Library houses one of the finest collections of historic newspapers in the world. Practically every edition of English or Irish newspaper dating from the year 1800 can be found there. With immediate effect, these historic treasures are now available for viewing and downloading from the internet at http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
The high-quality digital images are captured using five Zeutschel book scanners. “The OS 14000 has been specially designed for faithful reproduction of valuable historic documents”, says the Zeutschel Managing Director, Jörg Vogler. Thanks to the “Made in Germany” scanning technology, even the most sensitive material and newspaper pages of more 60 cm width can be carefully and productively scanned. The pages are then run through a text recognition programme so that subsequently each individual page is conveniently and fully searchable using keywords.
There are already 4 million pages from more than 200 titles in the British Newspaper Archive at present. Every day, 8,000 more pages are added, enough to cover an entire football pitch. The project’s overall aim is to digitize 40 million pages and place them online by 2021. The purpose of this is two-fold: On the one hand, the newspaper stocks are to be secured for future generations and on the other, the intention is to promote private and scientific interest in the historic material.
“A key factor in the successful delivery of the digital newspaper archive has been in using the latest technological innovations. The British Newspaper Archive brings history to life”, says Tim Martin, Managing Director of brightsolid Online Publishing.
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About Zeutschel:
Zeutschel GmbH is based in Hirschau near Tübingen and is a leading specialist provider in the field of cultural possession protection and has been supplying devices, solutions and systems for document and archive management for more than 50 years. With 60 members of staff, Zeutschel develops, produces and distributes scan systems, soft- and hardware solutions such as Campus software, delivery service software, image analysis software, capturing software as well as microfilm systems, hybrid systems and reading devices. Zeutschel’s solutions and systems are used throughout the world by libraries, archives, universities, land registries and commercial enterprises..
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E-Mail: info@zeutschel.de; Internet: www.zeutschel.de
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