Utah digital newspapers project

ManuscriptThe J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah has digitized 30,000 pages from three weekly Utah newspapers from the period of 1889 - 1922 and made the collections freely available on the Internet. This article describes a new method for digitizing historic newspapers, developed in a partnership between the University and two commercial organizations. Utilizing OCR and newspaper processing technology from iArchives Inc. and the CONTENTdm digital collections software suite, the new method recently prototyped by the University of Utah presents a viable and affordable digitization method to cultural heritage institutions nationwide. In particular, the process can be implemented incrementally, making it affordable for both small and large collections, and the technology supports many different digital formats, not just newspapers. The digitized newspapers are publicly accessible and may be searched full text or browsed by issue. With the recent award of a new grant another 100,000 pages from an expanded selection of newspapers are slated for digitization in 2003

Ανάπτυξη και Διαχείριση Ψηφιακών Συλλογών Εφημερίδων

The latest rapid changes in the information environment have brought out the outstanding existence of new technologies, whose main aim is the support, the exploitation and the distribution of libraries’ and archives’ content. The creation of digital libraries contributes to this undeniable fact. The main goal of this article is to present the structure and the development of digital libraries and especially those which contain newspapers collections. First of all, the importance of newspapers in the information society will be broadly reported. Moreover, the reasons for the necessity of newspaper digital libraries and the relationships between the libraries and the newspapers will be given. The basic steps and the materialization approaches of a specific newspapers digital library will be pointed out. Furthermore, current applications and usages for the development of digital content will be broadly mentioned. Finally, an international recognized programme for newspaper digital libraries in the Utah University in USA will be introduced. Some interesting procedures of this programme that will be pointed out are the creation’s steps of the certain digital library taken from the University in collaboration with computing enterprises, which offered their technological support for the accomplishment of the project. In addition, the history of the programme, the kind of the software that was used, the organization of the University site for the online access to the digital newspaper collections, and the future of the programme will come up. Consequently, some conclusions concerning the application of the programme will be set out, which compose the basis of a fruitful speculation for the information community. These conclusions can lead, both the public and the private libraries, to foresee the necessity of the organization and the management of their content through the creation of digital libraries

Getting the Crowd into Obituaries: How a Unique Partnership Combined the World's Largest Obituary Index with the Utah's Largest Historic Newspaper Database

Conference PaperPaper given at the IFLA International Newspaper Conference, Salt Lake City, UT

digitalnewspapers.org: The Digital Newspapers Program at the University of Utah

Journal ArticleThis article describes the Utah Digital Newspapers Program at the University of Utah's Marriott Library. Background information regarding the historical importance of newspapers, the current state of commercial newspaper digitization and the problems with small newspaper digitization are reviewed, and the solution provided by the University of Utah is offered. Details are provided for the program's history, funding, goals, and future plans. Other topics covered include the trade-offs between microfilm and hard copy source materials, how titles were selected, the processes and technologies utilized, website organization, displaying PDF files with Macintosh computers, and using bi-tonal or grayscale images

Massive newspaper migration - Moving 22 million records from CONTENTdm to Solphal

Journal ArticleUtah Digital Newspapers is a pioneering digital newspapers program at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library. Recently, a small project team completed a successful migration away from CONTENTdm onto a home-grown system called Solphal, built using open-source applications. The migration process is detailed along with examples of scripts used to prepare and enhance metadata. Transitioning away from a limiting vendor-based solution to a home-grown system has enabled the Utah Digital Newspapers program to be more responsive to user requests as well as realizing greater efficiencies in hardware and software. The platform has opened up new possibilities for the future as the collection continues to grow

Beware the Syndicate: An Examination of Syndicated Materials within Digital Copies of College Student Newspapers

This study examines copyright concerns of syndicated materials within digital copies of college student newspapers. A sample of 100 colleges were inspected to determine if archived issues of the student newspapers were available online and if so, did the newspapers contain syndicated material. The collection was further examined to establish if any effort was made to exclude the copyrighted material or if an explanation was provided for the inclusion of the material. This study shows approximately one third of the student newspapers that are available online contain syndicated material and only twenty percent made an effort to reduce copyright infringement or document fair use. Considering these findings and the prevalence of digitizing college student newspapers, more research is needed in this field.Master of Science in Library Scienc

Providing Access to Digitized Newspapers: A Case Study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library

In 2013, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library assessed its preservation and access infrastructure for locally digitized historical newspaper collections. At the time, the library was locally serving 900,000 pages of web-accessible historical newspapers using an internally managed system, and 200,000 pages via the Library of Congress’(LC) Chronicling America project. When the library reviewed its repository architecture for locally digitized newspapers, they also conducted a user survey, performed an environmental scan of digital newspaper management systems at peer institutions, and established user requirements. Following this analysis, the library implemented the Veridian digital newspaper platform in 2014 and transferred its digitized newspaper collections into it, and all of its digitized newspapers are now available from a single access point. This paper provides a detailed overview of the library’s assessment process, and a summary of the current status its digital newspaper repository services.Ope

The Heritage Approach to the Digitisation of Historical Periodicals: From Historical Periodicals to a Digital Collection of Contents

Međunarodne, nacionalne, regionalne i lokalne baštinske zajednice ulažu znatne profesionalne napore i sredstva kako bi se omogućio pristup baštinskim resursima primjenom digitalnih tehnologija. Njihova motivacija ima široki raspon: obuhvaćanje različitih vrsta resursa prema različitim vrijednosnim kriterijima, obraćanje mnogim skupinama korisnika, doprinos društvenim i ekonomskim ciljevima itd. Može se ustvrditi kako, zbog tehničkih, financijskih, komunikacijskih i profesionalnih ograničenja, pri odabiru građe za digitalizaciju prednost još uvijek imaju različiti popisi (inventari, registri, katalozi, kazala itd.). Digitalizacija sadržaja donekle je zapostavljena. Digitalni sadržaji donose poboljšanu funkcionalnost baštinskih izvora kroz bogatu i snažnu interaktivnost i multimedijalnost, mogućnost komercijalne uporabe te poticanje razvoja industrije digitalnih sadržaja. Povijesne novine, kao primarni baštinski izvor, veliki su izazov za digitalizacijske procese. Sadržaj povijesnih novina privlačna je građa iz niza razloga (povijesnih, socioloških, kulturoloških, ekonomskih itd.) i pravo je umijeće, uz uvijek prisutna financijska i profesionalna ograničenja, stvarati upotrebljiv, pretraživ i tržišno vrijedan digitalni sadržaj, koji će krajnjim korisnicima ponuditi dovoljno realističan uvid u bogatstvo novinskog izvornika. Rad prikazuje baštinski pristup digitalizaciji povijesnih novina, kojim se digitalna zbirka odabranih novinskih članaka povezuje s drugim digitalnim baštinskim zbirkama. Autorica predstavlja model migracije povijesnih novina na prijenosni digitalni medij, koji odabrane članke povezuje u relacijsku strukturu. Migracija nije izvedena samo tehnološki, nego je provedena strukturno-sadržajna obrada novinskog izvornika, koja je rezultirala tematskikoherentnom digitalnom zbirkom sadržaja. Iz povijesnih novina, kao analognog baštinskog izvor, nije nastao samo digitalni surogat, nego su novine, kao primarni izvor, integrirane s drugim, tematski povezanim baštinskim izvorima. Izlažući vlastiti projekt digitalizacije povijesnih novina – ilustrirane revije Svijet (Zagreb, 1926-1936), autorica upozorava i na mogućnost integracije povijesnih novina s različitim baštinskim izvorima kako bi se stvorila kvalitetna digitalna zbirka sadržaja, namijenjena krajnjim korisnicima.International, national, regional and local heritage communities are putting considerable professional efforts and resources into facilitating access to heritage resources with the application of digitaltechnologies. A wide range of motivation involved: from the wish to comprehend various types of resources to diverse value criteria, the need to address different groups of users and make contributions to various social and economic objectives. It can be stated that, because of technical, financial, communicational and professional constraints, in the selection of material for digitisation, various kinds of lists (inventories, registers, catalogues, indices and so on) tend to be privileged. The digitisation of contents is thus to a certain extent relegated. Digital contents give improved functionality of digital sources, through a rich and powerful interactivity and multimediality, the possibility of commercial use, and stimulus to the development of the digital contents industry. Historical periodicals, a primary heritage source, are an enormous challenge to digitisation processes. The content of historical periodicals is attractive material for a number of reasons (historical, sociological, cultural, economic) and it is a genuine art, in the face of the ever-present financial and professional constraints, to create usable and searchable, as well as valuable in market terms, digital contents, affording end users a sufficiently realistic insight into the richness of periodical sources. The paper presents the heritage approach to the digitisation of historical periodicals by which a digital collection of selected press articles is linked with other digital heritage collections. The author presents a model for the migration of historical papers onto a portable digital medium, capable of linking selected articles into a relational structure. Migration is performed not only technologically; the printed original has to be processed in terms of structure and content, to produce a thematically coherent digital collection of contents. From historical periodicals, an analogue heritage source, it is not just a digital surrogate that is produced; rather, the papers, as primary source, are integrated with other thematically linked heritage sources. Giving the example of her own project for the digitisation of historical periodicals – the illustrated review Svijet (Zagreb, 1926-1936), the author shows some of the possibilities of integrating historical periodicals with various other heritage sources, the objective being to create a high-quality digital collection of contents, meant for the end users