Building a digital library of newspaper clippings: the LAURIN project

Abstract

The field of digital libraries has attracted a lot of research during the last years. However no project has specifically taken into account the problem of building a digital library of newspaper clippings. It is well known that a great deal of cultural knowledge is stored in the newspapers of yesterday. Since newspapers are not always easily accessible, special clipping archives were created in the 20th century. People interested in newspaper information benefit from these archives because the work of selecting, cutting and indexing articles is done by specialists. In order to maintain their important position in the information market, clipping archives should be able to integrate their special skills (such as professional knowledge and experience in gathering and treating newspaper information) into the new technologies of the information society. The EU-funded LAURIN project will carry out the preliminary work necessary for an efficient and smooth shift from the "analogue" clipping archive to its "digital" successor. In order to effectively, accomplish this hard task, the LAURIN Consortium has gathered a significant number of libraries, which are acting as final users and test sites and are continuously driving the system design and development with requirements, suggestions, testing, and criticisms. This paper presents the LAURIN design methodology, the main user and organizational requirements for a clipping digital library and the overall architecture of the LAURIN system.