1 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

2 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

3 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.

4 Content and Coverage National Content 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) West Australian Northern Territory Times Courier Mail Advertiser Sydney Gazette Argus Mercury Canberra Times

5 First Newspaper First page of first Australian newspaper ever published The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser Saturday March

6 Through 150 years Up to 1954 (when Copyright applies), and later if agreement with publishers. The Argus 22 August 1945

7 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)

8 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

9 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

10 Zoom technology

11 Refine search by categories News Advertising Birth Death Marriage notices Obituaries Editorial commentary and letters Shipping News Arts and leisure Detailed lists, results, guides

12 Search Illustrations Categorised as: Photo Cartoon Map Graph Illustration Captions searchable Canberra Times 26 July 1928 page 6

13 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)

14 Relationship - ANPLAN Website:

15 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.

16 Keep Up to Date with Progress Website:

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