The DFG is providing just over 600,000 euros in funding for a third project by the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt aimed at the retro-digitization of historical newspapers. The focus is on newspapers from the Prussian province of Saxony, the library’s legal deposit area.
Over the next three years, the ULB will digitize 17 selected newspapers spanning the period from the late 19th century to the 1920s, store the full text in a machine-readable format, and make it available online for viewing and downloading. This will add 126,000 issues, comprising 952,000 pages, to the nearly 260,000 issues of historical daily and weekly newspapers already available.
The use of wood-containing paper has resulted in a large portion of the newspapers from this period being acidic and severely affected by decay. In many cases, the deterioration has progressed so far that deacidification is no longer possible, and digitization is the only way to preserve at least the content. Since many of the newspapers are now only available at the ULB, the rapid retro-digitization of the newspaper collection is of great importance, especially because, unlike in other federal states, Saxony-Anhalt has not established a state program for the retro-digitization of this endangered cultural heritage.