Newspapers in German Language – Progress in Digitisation and Accessibility

Abstract

Newspapers have been more and more recognised as key sources of modern history. The 100 years anniversary of World War I showed this in diverse examples of online presentations, publications and exhibitions – and it gave a heavy boost to academic demand as well as digitisation efforts for newspapers in German language.

Federal political structures and insufficient funding policies have been two of the reasons why the state of German newspaper digitisation is still comparatively delayed and dissatisfactory. But there are a couple of developments going on which show improvements in quantity and quality. The paper tries to summarize the most important ones focusing on topics like: • the digitisation efforts of several regional libraries • the results of the Europeana Newspapers Project regarding newspapers in German language • the piloting project of the German Research Foundation with prototype digitisation projects in five libraries, with the complete digitisation of German newspapers from the 17th century amongst others • the adaption of new features in order to optimise the presentation of newspapers in the German Union Catalogue of Serials

A gradual change in digitisation strategies can be acknowledged in Germany, driven by academic demand as well as the stewardship role of specifically interested libraries. With a short side glance at the digitised German-language press outside Germany the paper concludes the state of accessibility and steps still to be undertaken on the way to a comprehensive or at least representative usage of historical newspapers in German.