Exploring the Atlas of Digitised Newspapers:  Enhancing Access to and Collaborative Research with Digitised Historical Newspapers

1. Abstract

Building upon the two-year Digging into Data project, Oceanic Exchanges: Tracing Global Information Networks in Historical Newspaper Repositories, 1840-1914 (http://www.oceanicexchanges.org), this workshop will introduce participants to the Atlas of Digitised Newspapers, a comprehensive guide to the histories, structures and metadata of the digitised newspapers collections studied by the project, including those held by:

• Chronicling America
• The Hemeroteca Nacional Digital de México
• The British Library
• The Times Digital Archive
• Delpher
• Europeana
• Suomen Kansalliskirjaston Digitoidut Sanomalehdet
• Trove
• Papers Past
• ZEFYS

The Atlas provides readers with a deep contextualisation of these collections as well as detailed technical information about how to obtain, interpret, manipulate and map metadata and content across collections. Discussions will be supported by two additional online resources–an interactive visualisation of the metadata mapping and a linked dataset to support cross-database research.

Starting with humans rather than technologies or tools, the Atlas specifically uncovers the people behind the metadata and selection decisions. The workshop demonstrates a commitment to continuously co-constructing this work, and we hope to foster future collaborations. The Atlas will encourage research that “analyzes the historical and continued impacts of colonialism, postcolonialism, and hegemony”; siloed national archives privilege collections that look inward, but Oceanic Exchanges has used the combined collections to explore multilingual/multicultural groups with future possibilities for work on comparative Indigenous studies.

The aims of the workshop are to:

• Present the findings and outputs of the project;
• Create a space for critical discussion of the findings and future research opportunities by participants of the workshop;
• Allow for initial collaborations and hands-on use of the outputs in developing historical, literary, and computer science research questions.

All participants will have the opportunity to submit and review the following in advance of the workshop:

1. An online profile of previous work with digitised newspapers and historical periodicals.
2. Suggestions for possible in-workshop collaborations using the Atlas, visualisations and LOD datasets across our core expected disciplines.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• Develop a nuanced understanding of available data beyond OCR text;
• Practice cross-collection data management and cleaning;
• Develop an understanding of metadata and selection practices.

Schedule

• Introductions of workshop organisers and participants
• Introduction to Oceanic Exchanges
• Presentation of the Atlas of Digitised Newspapers
• Discussion of collections not represented in the Atlas by participants
• Walkthrough of Datasets and Use Cases
• Introduction of Disciplinary Challenges
• Division into groups for Disciplinary Challenges
• Presentations, feedback and discussions
• Closing Remarks

Suggested Readings:

Newspaper Preservation

Bourke, Thomas A. "Scholarly Micropublishing, Preservation Microfilming, and the National Preservation Effort in the Last Two Decades of the Twentieth Century: History and Prognosis." Microform Review 19.1 (1990): 4–16. https://doi.org/10.1515/mfir.1990.19.1.4.

Silverman, Randy. "Retaining hardcopy papers still important in digital age." Newspaper Research Journal 36.3 (2005): 363–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739532915600749.

Walravens, Hartmut, ed. International Newspaper Librarianship for the 21st Century. Müchen: K. G. Saur, 2006.

Newspaper Digitisation

Abruzzi, Ray, Luisa Calè, and Ana Parejo Vadillo. "Gale Digital Collections: Ray Abruzzi Interviewed by Luisa Calè and Ana Parejo Vadillo." 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 21 (2015): http://19.bbk.ac.uk/articles/753/.

Sigauke, D. T. ‘Digitisation Technologies for Newspaper Archives in Zimbabwe: The ICT Requirements for Digitising a Selected Bulawayo Newspaper Publication at the National Archives of Zimbabwe’. In 2017 IST-Africa Week Conference (IST-Africa) (2017): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.23919/ISTAFRICA.2017.8102315.

King, Edmund. "Digitisation of Newspapers at the British Library." The Serials Librarian: From the Printed Page to the Digital Age 49.1-2 (2005): 165–81. https://doi.org/10.1300/J123v49n01_07.

Metadata Standards

Europeana Data Model. Europeana Pro. Accessed 11 October 2019. https://pro.europeana.eu/resources/standardization-tools/edm-documentation.

Wilkinson, M. D. et al. "The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship." Scientific Data 3 (2016): article number 160018. https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618

Crowdsourcing Heritage Data

Recker, Mimi M. and David A. Wiley. "A Non-authoritative Educational Metadata Ontology for Filtering and Recommending Learning Objects," Interactive Learning Environments 9.3 (2001): 255–71. https://doi.org/10.1076/ilee.9.3.255.3568.

Workshop leaders:

M. H. Beals (m.h.beals@lboro.ac.uk, http://mhbeals.com/CurriculumVitae/) is a Lecturer in Digital History at Loughborough University specialising in the intersection of media and migration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is the leader of the Ontologies work package of Oceanic Exchanges and PI of the "Empowering Users of Historical Digitised Newspapers Collections’ project at Loughborough University.

Emily Bell (ebell@lboro.ac.uk, https://lboro.academia.edu/EmilyBell) is a Research Associate in Digital Humanities at Loughborough University on the ‘Empowering Users of Historical Digitised Newspapers Collections’ project, which aims to enable libraries to improve the choice and availability of historical newspapers, supporting a more informed technical and ethical use of collections by the public.

Program Committee:

More information on the full Oceanic Exchanges team can be found at https://oceanicexchanges.org/team/