Working in the Digital Developments Section exposes me to some of the most interesting and valuable collections our library has to offer. However, while I am often in awe of the rich colours of our medieval manuscripts, and the depth of information in our photographic collections some of the real treasures of the collections (in my opinion at least) can be found within the pages of our historic newspapers.
We’re currently just over half way through an ambitious project to digitise all of our holdings of pre-1910 newspapers. The stories and articles contained within the pages of these papers are a window to a world where the Great War has not yet started, and the post industrial revolution British Empire was at it’s prime. Even the classified advertisements are an interesting source of historical information, many of which offer lotions, potions and tonics that will claim to cure every ailment. After all, this was a time before the NHS brought real medicine to the masses.
However, digitising newspapers is not without its problems. Each edition is bound into large volumes containing several hundred pages, making them heavy and extremely difficult to handle. The scanners required to capture a full-page spread of a broadsheet newspaper are so large that the room needed to be specially adapted. Add to this the considerable infrastructure needed to move, store and preserve the hundreds of terabytes of data that the process creates, and you’ll begin to understand the task ahead of us.
When this mammoth task is completed in early 2012, every word contained within c1.2 million pages will be searchable and delivered directly to your desktop; or perhaps even your mobile device!