National Library of Australia

Project Details

The Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program is a long term ongoing program. However from March 2007 - October 2009 the ANDP was in 'project phase' whilst it was being established. During this time 2 systems were developed (the public search and delivery system, and the newspaper content management system); workflows were established, tested and implemented; storage was purchased and implemented; digitisation contractors were selected and pilots undertaken; guidelines and specifications were established and worked to. During this time Rose Holley was the Project Manager and led the IT team and the Digitisation Team.

The documents here outline what occured during the project phase and have been made publicly available in order to help contractors, contributors and libraries involved in the project understand the processes. They are also intended to help other National Libraries who are undertaking newspaper digitisation projects. The documents are added to and updated regularly (though by November 2009 the project phase is now complete).

Program Overview:

Digitisation:

Processing and OCR of Newspapers:

Apex CoVantage have produced an online video of their zoning process for digitising newspapers: IZAAC zoning and algorithmic conversion system (external link)

Metadata:

System Architecture:

Content Management System:

Search and Delivery System:

Statistics of Service Usage:

Public Collaborative Text Correction:

Tagging of Newspaper Articles:

Thank You to Contractors:

We express thanks and appreciation to the following contractors for their involvement in the establishment of the program from March 2007- November 2008.

Project Computing - for IT architecture and programming

EMC - for building of high speed fibre optic 63 TB storage array

NextScan - for upgrading NextStar scanning software to meet our needs

W & F Pascoe Ltd - for loan of master microfilms and scanning 1.8 million newspaper pages

Apex Co-Vantage - for OCR of 360,000 newspaper pages

Oxide Interactive - for user interface development of Australian Newspapers Beta System

 

 

Last updated Thursday 12-Nov-2009