Abraham Catalogue of Belgian Newspapers

Last updated

The Abraham Catalogue of Belgian Newspapers is an online database of historical Belgian newspapers from 1830 to 1950 that are preserved in libraries and other heritage institutions across Flanders and Brussels.

Contents

Contents

Abraham catalogues the location and ownership of Belgian national, regional, and local newspapers kept in more than one hundred libraries and heritage institutions. [1] So far, the number of inventoried newspaper titles from the period 1830-1950 already exceeds 7200. [2]

The database shows the most important specifications of each newspaper, such as title, date, and place of publication. Keywords indicate the type of newspaper (with a focus on e.g. trade, sports, or advertising) or the social community at which the newspaper was aimed (e.g. catholic, liberal, or socialist community). Seeing that newspapers were often attached to a certain city or region, the database allows searching on geographical terms.

Users are able to see detailed information on the exact editions and locations of each newspaper, including the format (paper, microform, or digital format) in which it is preserved in each of the institutions. Links are added for newspapers that are consultable online. It is not possible to search on content of any newspaper article. [3]

Name

The database was named after Abraham Verhoeven (Antwerp, 1575-1652), who is considered to be the first publisher of newspapers in the Southern Netherlands. His Nieuwe Tijdinghen (New Tidings) was a substantial contribution to the early beginnings of a daily form of newspaper.

The Abraham database: development and continuation

Abraham was developed as a project in 2007 by the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library in co-operation with a large number of heritage institutions. The catalogue was created to increase general access to historical newspapers, a goldmine of cultural-historical information. Frequent consultation of these newspapers, however, poses considerable risks, seeing that especially those from 1830 to 1950 are often printed on fragile and low-quality paper. The only way to preserve their contents for posterity will be by copying them to microform or digital format. In this way, Abraham plays an important role in the preservation of these vulnerable documents.

At the end of 2008, the project was taken over by the then newly founded Flanders Heritage Library. Together with various partners from the heritage field, Flanders Heritage Library is further actively updating and enriching the database with new records. In the meantime, Abraham is being used as a helpful tool for digitising projects.

See also

Related Research Articles

The National Digital Newspaper Program is a joint project between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress to create and maintain a publicly available, online digital archive of historically significant newspapers published in the United States between 1836 and 1922. Additionally, the program will make available bibliographic records and holdings information for some 140,000 newspaper titles from the 17th century to the present. Further, it will include scope notes and encyclopedia-style entries discussing the historical significance of specific newspapers. Added content will also include contextually relevant historical information. "One organization within each U.S. state or territory will receive an award to collaborate with relevant state partners in this effort." In March 2007 more than 226,000 pages of newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910 were put online at a fully searchable site called "Chronicling America." As of December 2007, the total number of pages is about 413,000. This further expanded to be 1 million pages in 2009. Funding through the National Endowment for the Humanities is carried out through their "We The People" initiative.

In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies, and it combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and "born-digital" content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time. The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Preservation and Reformatting Section of the American Library Association, defined digital preservation as combination of "policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time." According to the Harrod's Librarian Glossary, digital preservation is the method of keeping digital material alive so that they remain usable as technological advances render original hardware and software specification obsolete.

Royal Library of the Netherlands National Library of the Netherlands

The Royal Library of the Netherlands is the national library of the Netherlands, based in The Hague, founded in 1798. The KB collects everything that is published in and concerning the Netherlands, from medieval literature to today's publications. About 7 million publications are stored in the stockrooms, including books, newspapers, magazines and maps. The KB also offers many digital services, such as the national online Library, Delpher and The Memory. Since 2015, the KB has played a coordinating role for the network of the public library.

Microform Forms with microreproductions of documents

Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or one twenty-fifth of the original document size. For special purposes, greater optical reductions may be used.

Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal Portuguese national library, fulfilling the function of legal deposit and copyright

The Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal is the Portuguese national library, fulfilling the function of legal deposit and copyright.

Abraham Verhoeven Belgian newspaper publisher

Abraham Verhoeven (1575–1652) was the publisher of the first newspaper of the Southern Netherlands.

The Center for Research Libraries is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries, based on a buy-in concept for membership of the consortia. The consortium acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. It also gathers and analyzes data pertaining to the preservation of physical and digital resources, and fosters the sharing of expertise, in order to assist member libraries in maintaining their collections. The Center for Research Libraries was founded in 1949, as the Midwest Inter-Library Center (MILC). The traditional role of the CRL was as an aggregator of tangible collection materials, however this has been updated in the digital age into the CRL's current role as a facilitator of collection development, digitization, and licensing collections by individual libraries and interest groups. This transformation required the CRL to adopt new funding models from partnerships with key organizations, and an updated use of current technology to support community outreach and engagement. The funding was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the IMLS.

The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, Germany, is an independent, public research institute that carries out and promotes historical research on the foundations of Europe in the early and late Modern period. Though autonomous in nature, the IEG has close connections to the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In 2012, it joined the Leibniz Association.

The Illinois Newspaper Project (INP) began as part of the United States Newspaper Program (USNP), a cooperative effort between the states and the federal government designed to catalog and preserve on microfilm the nation's historic newspaper heritage. The USNP was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and administered by the Library of Congress, who are currently funding the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), of which the INP is also a part.

Trove Australian online library database aggregator

Trove is an Australian online library database aggregator and service which includes full text documents, digital images, bibliographic and holdings data of items which are not available digitally, and a free faceted-search engine as a discovery tool. The database includes archives, images, newspapers, official documents, archived websites, manuscripts and other types of data. Hosted by the National Library of Australia in partnership with content providers, including members of the National and State Libraries Australia, it is one of the most well-respected and accessed GLAM services in Australia, with over 70,000 daily users.

The Flemish or Flemings are a Germanic ethnic group native to Flanders, in modern Belgium, who speak Flemish Dutch. They are one of two principal ethnic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons. Flemish people make up the majority of the Belgian population.

A memory institution is an organization maintaining a repository of public knowledge, a generic term used about institutions such as libraries, archives, heritage institutions, aquaria and arboreta, and zoological and botanical gardens, as well as providers of digital libraries and data aggregation services which serve as memories for given societies or mankind. Memory institutions serve the purpose of documenting, contextualizing, preserving and indexing elements of human culture and collective memory. These institutions allow and enable society to better understand themselves, their past, and how the past impacts their future. These repositories are ultimately preservers of communities, languages, cultures, customs, tribes, and individuality. Memory institutions are repositories of knowledge, while also being actors of the transitions of knowledge and memory to the community. These institutions ultimately remain some form of collective memory. Increasingly such institutions are considered as a part of a unified documentation and information science perspective.

Heritage Microfilm, Inc. Microfilm digitization business based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Heritage Microfilm, Inc. is a preservation microfilm and microfilm digitization business located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library Heritage library in Antwerp

The Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library is the repository library of the city of Antwerp. It is named after the Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience, whose statue adorns the library. The library conserves books and magazines to keep them available permanently.

Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History library and archives in Atlanta, Georgia, United States

The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History is a special library within the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, located in Atlanta's Sweet Auburn Historic District. The Auburn Avenue Research Library "is the first library in the Southeast to offer specialized reference and archival collections dedicated to the study and research of African American culture and history and of other peoples of African descent."

The Gazette van Gent was a twice-weekly newspaper originally published in Ghent from 1723 to 1809 under the title Gazette van Ghendt. The publisher switched to French in 1809, first under the title Gazette de Gand and from 1811 as Journal du département de l'Escaut. Dutch-language publication resumed in 1814, initially under the title Gazette van Gend, and continued until 1940, with a hiatus during the First World War.

The Short Title Catalogus Flanders (STCV) is an online retrospective bibliography of books that were printed prior to 1801 within the current boundaries of Flanders. The project is executed by the Flanders Heritage Library network.

Books in the Netherlands books by country or region

As of 2018, Wolters Kluwer ranks as the Dutch biggest publisher of books in terms of revenue. Other notable Dutch houses include Brill and Elsevier.

Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek or Flanders Heritage Library is a library consortium in the Flemish Region of Belgium bringing together six institutions with considerable holdings of manuscripts and old printed books. The network was founded in 2008, and was authorised as a heritage organisation for Flanders in 2012.

'Unlocking Our Sound Heritage' (UOSH) is a UK-wide project that aims to preserve, digitise and provide public access to a large part of the nation's sound heritage. The UOSH project forms part of the core programme 'Save Our Sounds' led by the British Library and involving a consortium of ten regional and national archival institutions. Between 2017 and 2022 the aim is to digitise and make available up to 500,000 rare and unique sounds recordings, not only from the British Library's collection but from across the UK, dating from the birth of recorded sound in the 1880s to the present time. The recordings include sounds such as local dialects and accents, oral histories, previously inaccessible musical performances and plays, and rare wildlife sounds. The consortium will also deliver various public engagement programmes, and a website where up to 100,000 recordings will be freely available to everyone for research, enjoyment and inspiration.

References

  1. "Deelnemende instellingen (a list of participating institutions - in Dutch)". Flanders Heritage Library (2016-01-28).
  2. "Welke collecties zijn opgenomen? (overview of the collections - in Dutch)". Flanders Heritage Library (2015-12-09).
  3. "Welke gegevens zijn opgenomen? (overview of the specifications - in Dutch)". Flanders Heritage Library (2011-02-08).