The Volksblatt is being digitized
Browsing through old newspapers has its charm in many respects. For example, the advertisements that appeared back then are very different from those of today. The style of writing in the articles has also changed over the decades. And of course it is exciting to take a closer look at the editorial content, especially in terms of political trends and technical developments. Dr Andreas Christoph, who is responsible for a digitization project at the Thuringian University and State Library in Jena, in which a book2net Dragon scanner from our company is being used, agrees. The Volksblatt – published until 1904 under the title Saalfelder Volksblatt – is currently being digitized. This was a social democratic daily newspaper that was published between 1890 and 1933. The Volksblatt is now almost completely in the Saalfeld city archives.
Project background
In addition to the multifaceted interest in old newspaper editions in general, two other aspects play a role regarding the Volksblatt: the importance of the long-standing publisher Arthur Hofmann and the significance of this daily newspaper in researching the history of the SPD in Thuringia from its beginnings until 1933.
“Archive holdings of the Thuringian SPD, especially from the time of the Weimar Republic, have only survived to a limited extent. The history of the party for this period in particular has hardly been researched to date. For this reason, the Volksblatt is of great importance,” reads the application for funding for the digitization project. As far as the editor – and editorial writer – Arthur Hofmann (1863-1944) is concerned, he was one of the outstanding social democrats in Thuringia. He was a co-founder of the SPD in Saalfeld and Rudolstadt, as well as a member of the state parliament for more than three decades and a member of the government in Saxony-Meiningen after 1918. He was also a member of parliament and at times deputy head of government in the state of Thuringia as well as a member of the Reichstag and National Assembly.
The Technology
“For now, we’re just securing the legacy”, says project manager Dr Andreas Christoph. Whereby securing also alludes to the age-related brittleness of the newsprint. If anyone interested were to simply leaf through the old stock, it would cause considerable damage.
The book2net Dragon scanner offers the ideal solution with its object-friendly operation and speed. The respective double page of the newspaper is placed on the book cradle and the Dragon then separates the left and right pages during scanning so that each page can ultimately be viewed individually in the digital copy.
This project at the University and State Library in Jena requires not only the technology but also the people who do the work at the scanner. Dr Andreas Christoph and his team are focusing on the idea of inclusion: employees of Federal Association of Lebenshilfe e.V. are playing a decisive role in the digitization of the newspaper editions.
Outlook
All editions of the Volksblatt are expected to be digitized by the autumn of this year. The newspaper pages will then, according to the plan, be published on state and federal online portals, as well as on the Europeana platform, where digital cultural heritage from Europe can be found.
Anyone interested in the newspaper editions can simply leaf through them or browse through specific issues. Technical developments could also make it possible to search for keywords and then have the results displayed. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) would be an instrument to make this a reality.
