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Historical newspapers to become digitally accessible

Historical newspapers to become digitally accessible
The new project will add a further 126,000 issues with a total of 952,000 pages to the almost 260,000 issues already digitized. (Archive image) / Photo: Jan Woitas/dpa
From: Sachsen News
Numerous newspaper pages are to be digitized at the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt. This involves content that reveals more about Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.

The team at the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt wants to digitize almost one million pages of historical newspapers. "Newspapers are a cultural showcase of their time. They provide information on regional politics, economics and culture," said Anke Berghaus-Sprengel, head of the library. The aim is to make knowledge about life in Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia in the past accessible.

The selected newspapers were published from the end of the 19th century to the 1920s and included smaller local newspapers as well as larger titles and their supplements. They include, for example, the "Arterner Zeitung" and the "Ziegenrücker Kreisanzeiger".

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Insights into the region of the Prussian province of Saxony

A total of around 126,000 issues of 17 selected newspapers from the Prussian province of Saxony are to be scanned, processed and then made freely accessible on the Internet. The Prussian province of Saxony was founded in 1815 and comprised regions that today lie in Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony or Thuringia.

Many of the newspapers can only be found at the University and State Library and some are in poor condition. "The destruction of many copies is so advanced that deacidification is no longer possible. Rapid digitization is therefore of great importance and often the only way to at least preserve these historical sources digitally," says Berghaus-Sprengel.

Not the first project of its kind

The library at the university in Halle has one of the largest collections of historical newspapers in Germany, with more than 1,300 newspaper titles from before 1945. This also includes 800 regional titles.

The project on the newspapers of the Prussian province of Saxony is reportedly the third project to digitize historical newspapers at the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt. Previously, historical newspapers from Halle and the greater Halle-Merseburg area were among those being looked at.

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