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Helping communities access and explore their newspaper heritage.

Rose Holley – Manager Newspaper Digitisation Program http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp rholley@nla.gov.au

Australian Media Traditions Conference23 November 2007, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst

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Status of the ProgramNovember 2006 Minister for Arts and Sports approval

Budget approval -$8 million for 3 million pages over 4 years

Contracts signed with digitisation suppliers

April 2007 program pilot phase commences

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Content and CoverageNational Content

Initially a title from each state

Focus on major titles from each state first

Anticipated that ‘regional’ titles may be contributed later

Coverage: published between 1803 – 1954

(out of copyright)

West Australian

Northern Territory Times

Courier Mail

Advertiser Sydney Gazette

Argus

Mercury

Canberra Times

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First Newspaper

• First page of first Australian newspaper ever published

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales AdvertiserSaturday March 5 1803

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Through 150 years

• Up to 1954 (when Copyright applies), and later if agreement with publishers.

The Argus 22 August 1945

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Relationship - ANPLANWebsite: http://www.nla.gov.au/anplan/

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Keep Up to Date with Progress• Website: http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/

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National Help• NLA working with State and Territory

Libraries as part of ANPLAN. • Libraries suggest titles and dates and

provide microfilm for digitising.• ANPLAN members and other stakeholders

will provide feedback on the search and delivery prototype.

• Developing model for national contribution of regional newspapers.

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Process in briefNational sourcing of selected newspaper microfilm

masters.

Masters scanned by Contractor, Sydney to tiff files.

NLA perform quality assurance, add metadata.

Contractor, India process tiff files - OCR, zoning, xml markup.

NLA QA files, ingest to system, create derivatives for delivery.

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LogisticsAustralia (State Capitals – Sydney/Canberra) USA (Virginia) - India (Hyderabad, Chennai)

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6 Month Progress• IT Infrastructure and storage implemented at NLA

• Content management and ingest software developed by NLA to support workflow

• Quality assurance and production software developed by US/India contractor

• Pilot data sent to contractors to test workflows, systems and software against agreed project spec.

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Next 6 months• Acceptance of pilot data then commence

production phase (3 million pages)

• Development of search and delivery prototype

• Public launch of service with a good body of content in 2008

• Progressive addition of content – national program ongoing

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Technology – internal NLAOld newspapers being processed and delivered

using latest digital technology

• NLA developing in house:– Ingest and storage system– Workflow and content management system including

quality assurance module– Search and delivery system

• NLA providing:– System Infrastructure

(storage, backup, disaster recovery)

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Infrastructure and Storage

Online Storage – 70 TB:• Working space for images in processing 40TB for 1 million pages• Search and delivery derivatives 30TB for 3 million pages• XML files, database systems and indexes 1 TB

Offline Storage – unlimited for master images on tape.

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Establishing Workflows

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Technology - external

• Scanning microfilm using Flexscan/Eclipse scanner and latest software (nextstar) from NextScanwww.nextscan.com

20,000 pages a week.

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Scanning Contractor

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Digital Images returned to NLA

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Quality Assurance at NLA

Use 2 widescreen monitors placed vertically. Can view complete page within context of issue.

Add metadata, sort out missing and duplicate pages within an issue.

Prepare batches to send for OCR.

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Metadata

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Page verification

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Technology - external

Software developed to:• Zone areas and articles on a page • Flag continuing articles across multiple pages• Categorise articles on a page• OCR text on a page• Re-key headings and first 4 lines of text.• Deliver XML files (ALTO) and METS/MODS

files.

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India Facility - Hyderabad

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Quality Assurance

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OCR Accuracy

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Batch reporting

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Acceptance Criteria

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Prototype Development

Under discussion:• Derivative sizes and zoom technology

testing• Search and Browse features• Results and refinement of results• User interaction with source (web 2.0)• Interface design

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Digital Newspaper Searching

• Newspapers full text searchable• Image captions searchable• Search across multiple papers e.g. by

persons name.• Refine searching by:

– Date– Newspaper title– State published

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Refine search by categories

• News• Advertising• Birth Death Marriage notices• Obituaries• Editorial commentary and letters• Shipping News• Arts and leisure• Detailed lists, results, guides

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Search Illustrations

Categorised as:• Photo• Cartoon• Map• Graph• IllustrationCaptions searchable

Canberra Times 26 July 1928 page 6

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Browsing and Viewing

• Browse papers page by page• Zoom in and out of image

– to read small text– to view context of article within page layout

• Print article or entire page or issue

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Zoom technology

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Testing derivative sizes and zooming

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Prototype wireframe

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Other features

Under discussion:• OCR correction by users• Personal annotation of articles by users• Tagging results• Creating public sets (for historical events)• Clustering results• Searching across other relevant resources (paid

subscription services, international resources, other digital resources)

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Prototype release

• To be released to stakeholders who have given microfilm content

• Stakeholders able to view their data• Feedback on data quality and search

functionality• Amendments made and then ‘search and

delivery version 1’ released to a wider group for testing and feedback before public launch in 2008.

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Pilot Data• Canberra Times• Sydney Gazette• Northern Territory Times• South Australia Advertiser• Hobart Town Gazette, Courier, Colonial, Mercury• Melbourne Argus• Perth Gazette• West Australian• Brisbane Courier Mail(12 titles, 8000 issues = 50,000 pages = 500,000 articles)

41http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp