ELSEVIER
THE PRESERVATION OF DUTCH JOURNALISTIC HISTORY
X-CAGO proudly digitises the renowned publication Elsevier Weekblad (recently renamed ‘EW’) and in so doing ensures it is preserved for future generations. EW is the best-known Dutch weekly news magazine, whose first issue appeared on 27 October 1945. Its monthly predecessor, the beautifully produced issue - Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift (Elsevier's Illustrated Monthly) was published from 1891 until 1940 when it was discontinued due to the German occupation.
It is now highly sought after by collectors. The authors of Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift included a number of renowned Dutch writers such as Louis Couperus, Jan Slauerhoff, Jan de Hartog and Herman Heijermans, all of whom contributed articles that were often illustrated by leading artists. The journal is now experiencing a new lease of life with the entire fifty-year archive having been digitised by X-CAGO. It is accessible via a free website
The digitisation of Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift is further proof of the expertise of X-CAGO, a media solutions company headquartered in Roermond, the Netherlands. X-CAGO's experience in carrying out large-scale projects such as Geïllustreerd Maandschrift is unparalleled.
In the Netherlands, for example, X-CAGO has digitised the century-old archive of the Leeuwarder Courant newspaper and various collections of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), the National Library of the Netherlands, the Provincial Archives of Gelderland, the Dordrecht Municipal Archives (DiEP) and Brill Academic Publishers. X-CAGO’s digital archive expertise extends internationally an example of which is the entire backlog of Wheels Magazine for Are Media Australia alongside many other archives and libraries.
In addition to project-based digitisation of newspapers, magazines, journals and other documents, X-CAGO also creates websites that display historical issues and provide high-precision searchability using X-CAGO's Archive ExPress software. X-CAGO's patented technologies also simplify the retrieval and recognition of text passages, even if they are in old script and/or spelling.
In the case of Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift, every single page from the journal's half-century of production was scanned and uploaded to an image database. X-CAGO's technologies ensured that the scans were as faithful to the original as possible, based on the pages in the bound volumes. The entire database is searchable by entering specific words or by searching by author, title, illustrator, caption, year, part or edition. The contributors list contains the names of thousands of illustrators and authors. The end result is the preservation of the content so that it can be enjoyed, studied and read by generations to come.
The creation of the website, the digitisation of the content and its searchability were made possible by a donation from the publisher Reed Elsevier. The project is an important contribution to making Dutch cultural heritage publicly accessible.
WHY CONSERVE?
Thanks to the digitisation of Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift, an important part of Dutch cultural heritage has been preserved for present and future generations just as it is for other digitisation projects. Paper goes stale and eventually spoils and printed archives are often inaccessible. Digitisation however makes it possible to preserve entire archives without any loss of quality while content can be made available to audiences anywhere in the world, simply by accessing the internet with the level of access determined and controlled by the content owner. Regardless of the content, X-CAGO’s solutions ensure content can be accessed and found with a few clicks of the mouse.
SPELLING
The project to digitise Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift was characterised by a number of key features:
Enabling access to literary and journalistic works - in their original form - from an important period in Dutch history;
Volume: more than 500,000 pages in a non-standard print format;
Technically innovative elements: large-area scanning in colour;
The ability to access each content item individually;
Full searchability (including spelling variants);
Ensuring the highest of quality for each item.
DIGITAL EXTRACTION OF INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES
With X-CAGO's ClipWorX software, users can extract individual articles and advertisements from scanned pages. The underlying technology is unique and has been patented. The software then creates XML files for each individual page, article or photo. This ensures that users are only delivered search results for the articles that actually match their search query.
X-CAGO was responsible for the technical implementation of the entire project. This involved three main elements: (1) scanning, (2) item-level segmentation and (3) publishing the full pages via a free website. Each page was scanned in colour directly from the original files using state-of-the-art video scanners. This ensured that the valuable original publications were not damaged and that the authenticity of the source material could be digitally matched.
TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION
MAKING DIGITAL COLLECTIONS OF PRINTED MEDIA FULLY SEARCHABLE
Archive ExPress is the name of X-CAGO's software solution for making (printed) media available on the Internet. Among other things, Archive ExPress enables users to:
· flip through the pages;
· enlarge individual articles or advertisements with a single click;
· search within the collection or in the entire collection for the full article text.
SERVICES YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN
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SUPERSET
X-CAGO currently processes more than 5,000 newspaper and magazine titles from PDF input files into one or more XML/JSON output formats.
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WEB CRAWLING
This is the conversion of articles on web pages into a consistent XML/JSON output format. This is achieved through the use of a high-precision web crawler.
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HISTORIC DIGITISATION
This involves the digitsation of hard copy archival content for media companies / publishers.
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ARCHIVE EXPRESS
Archive ExPress successfully captures, stores, researches, publishes, distributes and syndicates content from both print media (newspapers, magazines, books, catalogues, etc.) and digital media.
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CONTENT TRANSLATIONS
X-CAGO can provide fast and reliable automated content translations in no less than 30 languages. New languages are being added regularly.
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ABOUT US
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