Transcript Using Digital Technologies to unlock history for researchers. Rose Holley – Manager Newspaper Digitisation Program Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium: Humanities Futures 16

Using Digital Technologies to unlock
history for researchers.
Rose Holley – Manager Newspaper Digitisation Program
Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium: Humanities Futures
16 November 2007, Griffith University, Brisbane
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Status of the Program
November 2006 Minister for Arts and
Sports approval
Budget approval -$8 million for 3 million
pages over 4 years
Signed contracts with digitisation suppliers
April 2007 program pilot phase
commences
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Process in brief
National sourcing of selected newspaper microfilm
masters.
Masters scanned by W & F Pascoe, Sydney to tiff files.
NLA perform quality assurance, add metadata.
Apex Publishing, India process tiff files - OCR, zoning, xml
markup.
NLA QA files, ingest to system, create derivatives for
delivery.
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Content and Coverage
National Content
Northern
Territory
Times
Initially a title from each
state
Focus on major titles
from each state first
Anticipated that
‘regional’ titles may
be contributed later
Coverage: published
between 1803 – 1954
(out of copyright)
Courier Mail
West Australian
Advertiser
Sydney Gazette
Canberra Times
Argus
Mercury
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First Newspaper
• First page of first
Australian newspaper
ever published
The Sydney Gazette and New
South Wales Advertiser
Saturday March 5 1803
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Through 150 years
• Up to 1954 (when
Copyright applies),
and later if agreement
with publishers.
The Argus 22 August 1945
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Progress
• IT Infrastructure implemented and
software developed (NLA)
• Pilot phase ongoing: digitisation of
newspapers and conversion into full text
(Contractors)
• Development of search and delivery
system (NLA)
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Digital Newspaper Searching
• Newspapers full text searchable
• Image captions searchable
• Search across multiple papers e.g. by
persons name.
• Refine searching by:
– Date
– Newspaper title
– State published
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Browsing and Viewing
• Browse papers page by page
• Zoom in and out of image
– to read small text
– to view context of article within page layout
• Print article or entire page or issue
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Zoom technology
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Refine search by categories
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News
Advertising
Birth Death Marriage notices
Obituaries
Editorial commentary and letters
Shipping News
Arts and leisure
Detailed lists, results, guides
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Search Illustrations
Categorised as:
• Photo
• Cartoon
• Map
• Graph
• Illustration
Captions searchable
Canberra Times 26 July 1928 page 6
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Other features
Possibilities under consideration:
• OCR correction by users
• Personal annotation of articles by users
• Tagging results
• Clustering results
• Searching across other relevant resources
(paid subscription services, international
resources, other digital resources)
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Relationship - ANPLAN
Website: http://www.nla.gov.au/anplan/
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National Help
• NLA working with State and Territory
Libraries as part of ANPLAN.
• Libraries suggest titles and dates and
provide microfilm for digitising.
• ANPLAN members and other stakeholders
will provide feedback on the search and
delivery prototype.
• Developing model for national contribution
of regional newspapers.
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Keep Up to Date with Progress
• Website: http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/
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