Making Old Newspapers Searchable: Microfilm & OCR
The Paper Problem: With the newfound ability to assemble content and produce pages quickly and efficiently, existing papers increased their circulation numbers substantially. The demand for the paper on which to print the news inevitably grew as well. This created a need to use a less expensive paper stock to match the increased production rates. […]
Making Old Newspapers Searchable: The Next Era
Despite achieving the means to print in mass quantities, the publishing industry’s productivity was largely constrained by the need to set type by hand. By 1880, the Linotype Printing machine was invented. The machine used a keyboard, which allowed an entire line of type to be laid at once. The requisite time and effort to […]
Making Old Newspapers Searchable: The History of Printing
Until the first part of the 19th century, the composition and typesetting were accomplished by painstakingly placing each individual letter into a “galley” by hand. The galleys were then placed into a “chase” that was the size of the final page. Since each letter was placed individually, there was no method for standardization or uniformity.If […]
Making Old Newspapers Searchable: The Beginning
The newspaper industry in the United States has evolved considerably over the last 300 years. Each development in the typesetting methods, printing process, and paper stock created unique challenges in adapting the digital image of old newspapers to a searchable format. Digitization Of Historical Newspapers & OCR (Optical Character Recognition) “What history buffs want is […]
Taking History Personally
She had a space set up in her family room at the bottom of the stairs. The wood paneled wall behind the table was covered in framed photos of ancestors who had passed long ago. A few documents and an old map hung next to those pictures. A small filing cabinet, two old office chairs, […]
12 Million Pages of Newspapers to be Preserved: State Historical Society of Iowa and Advantage Archives to microfilm and digitize state’s collection of newspapers
DES MOINES – The process to save the first draft of Iowa history just got a lot smoother. The State Historical Society of Iowa today unveiled a sweeping new plan to preserve more than 12 million pages of newspapers in its collection, giving Iowans greater access to more than 300 titles dating to the state’s […]