The Austrian National Library in Vienna is a pioneering force in Europe for the digitisation of books, newspapers and other materials.
By order and at the expense of Austrian foundation Socrates, the Hamburg based docWORKS specialist CCS Content Conversion Specialists has digitised the “Wiener Zeitung” (Viennese Newspaper) with all its supplements: “Wiener Abendpost” (Vienna Evening Mail), “Amtsblatt” (Gazette) and “Zentralanzeiger für Handel und Gewerbe” (Official Trade and Commerce Bulletin). The Wiener Zeitung is part of the stock of the Austrian National Library. The project covers the volumes from 1909 to 1923 and has a total of 100.000 pages. The Wiener Zeitung is the oldest Austrian newspaper that is still being published today, having started in 1703 as the “Wienerisches Diarium” (Viennese Daily). Its Gothic type represents a tough challenge for OCR (optical character recognition). The digitising process includes automatic analysis of the papers’ layout (captions, columns etc) – this will later enable searches to be performed within an article.
“Newspapers very much reflect not just international, but also regional and local history, politics and culture as well as ethical and social concerns of the time. With Europe ever expanding, there is a strong renewed interest in one’s local region. No other source covers the diversity of regional information available better than newspapers.
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