Digitization of the daily newspaper "Délmagyarország" in Szeged
Nagy Gyula
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SZTE Klebelsberg Könyvtár
Sándor Ákos
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SZTE Klebelsberg Könyvtár
Digitization project for a prestigious daily newspaper, the Délmagyarország
The Délmagyarország, covering a hundred years, is a very important source of the history of the Southern Hungarian region and that of the city of Szeged. Digitizing the information it contains, creating a searchable database of articles will provide unlimited possibilities for research. The printed copies of issues for digitization have been combined by the Klebelsberg Library and the Somogyi Library which two libraries, due to the quantity of the material, closely cooperate in the process of digitization as well. Additionally, copies to fill gaps in the series are supplied by the Library of the Parliament and the National Széchényi Library.
The first news on the project was released in April of 2011. The second one in September of 2012 gave information on the start of the work. Between the two dates the two libraries made the necessary preparations: the Délmagyarország was assessed page by page in the stock of both of the two libraries. Since several traditional card catalogs, describing the most interesting articles, are available, the aim of their digitization and inclusion to the material was set already at the beginning of the project, too. All this required a careful planning. Two large catalogs were involved in the project among others: the card collection of the Klebelsberg Library that includes articles on the history of the University and the card catalog of the Somogyi Library which refers to the history of Szeged. (So far, this analytical processing has produced 100.000 descriptions which, of course, will be completed by the full-text search option.)
Having finished the preparation activities the actual, large-scale operation of the project started at the end of 2012, after summarizing the results of test scannings (size, watermark, resolution etc.). According to our estimation we have prepared to work with 30.000 newspaper issues by the end of the project. Counting with an average number of pages to be digitized we anticipate half a million pages being available electronically (which would correspond 20 meters of large and heavy printed volumes).