LIBER is a network of over 425 European research libraries from over 40 countries. It focuses on activities like scholarly communication, digitization, and participation in EU projects. The Europeana Newspapers Project aims to aggregate over 18 million digitized newspaper pages from European libraries for the Europeana and European Library websites. It will refine the texts using techniques like OCR, named entity recognition and analyze existing newspaper collections. The goal is to improve access and searchability of these historical newspaper pages.

1. LIBER, Europeana and the
Europeana Newspapers Project
GI2012, Dresden: 18.05.2012
Aleš Pekárek, Association of European Research Libraries, Den Haag, NL

2. What is LIBER?
• the largest network of European research/academic libraries:
more than 425 institutions, from over 40 countries
• LIBER's network is not restricted to the area of the European
Union and it covers the whole Europe
• LIBER was founded in 1971. Since 2009, LIBER has had its
seat in The Hague (Netherlands)
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3. LIBER’s main activities (1)
Strategic Plan 2009 – 2012 focuses on the following areas:
• Scholarly Communication
• Digitisation and Resource Discovery
• Heritage Collections and Preservation
• Organisation and Human Resources
• LIBER Services
Through – Steering Committees & Working groups
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4. LIBER’s main activities (2)
Other main activities:
• Participation in EU projects
• Lobbying
• Publications
• Annual Conference
• Networking
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5. Participation in EU projects
Example: EUROPEANA LIBRARIES
http://www.europeana-libraries.eu/
5 million digital objects from 19 leading European research
libraries freely accessible on The European Library and
Europeana websites.
LIBER Members are welcome to participate on EU projects!!!
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6. Lobbying - examples
• Copyright
LIBER signs MoU on Out of Commerce Works on behalf of
European Research Libraries
• Digitisation
LIBER’s expression of interest for involvement in the EU Digital
Agenda
• European Research Area
LIBER response to the EC survey on Scientific Information in the
Digital Age
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7. LIBER Annual Conference
The largest European conference of research libraries
2012 – Tartu, Estonia
2013 – Munich, Germany
2014 – Varna, Bulgary
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8. LIBER’s main communication channels
Website: www.libereurope.eu
LinkedIn: LIBEReurope
Twitter: @LIBEReurope
FOLLOW LIBER
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9. JOIN LIBER!
Become a
See the following links for the membership benefits and
application form
Any questions or ideas? Contact us at liber@kb.nl
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10. WHAT IS EUROPEANA??
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/
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11. EUROPEANA means...
For users:
Europeana is a single access point to millions of books, paintings, films,
museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout
Europe. It is an authoritative source of information coming from European
cultural and scientific institutions.
For heritage institutions:
Europeana is an opportunity to reach out to more users, increase their web
traffic, enhance their users' experience and build new partnerships.
For professionals in the heritage sector:
Europeana is a platform for knowledge exchange between librarians,
curators, archivists and the creative industries.
For policy-makers and funders:
Europeana is a prestigious initiative endorsed by the European
Commission, and is a means to stimulate creative economy and promote
cultural tourism.
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12. Europeana Newspapers: Aims and Objectives
Europeana Newspapers
• aims at the aggregation and refinement of newspapers for The
European Library and Europeana.
• will use refinement methods for OCR, OLR (article segmentation), and
named entity (NER) and class recognition
• the libraries participating in the project will provide around 18 million
digitised newspaper pages to Europeana
• Further libraries will be encouraged to contribute newspapers to
Europeana and TEL by the project
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13. Project Profile: Consortium & stakeholders
• 17 partners from 12 countries within the consortium
• National libraries
• University libraries
• SME
• External partners and stakeholders:
• Involvement of libraries outside the project consortium
• Framework:
• Funded as a Best Practise Network in the ICTPSP programme of
the European Commission
• Project Duration: February 2012 – January 2015
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14. Europeana Newspapers Consortium
LIBER
SUB HH
NLL
CCS
USAL
NLP
BL KB SBB ONB
UBIK NLT
BnF
UB
LFT
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15. Consortium Partners
1. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin 9. University of Salford
(project co-ordinator) 10. CCS Content Conversion
2. National Library of the Specialists GmbH
Netherlands 11. Stichting LIBER
3. National Library of Estonia 12. National Library of Latvia
4. Österreichische 13. National Library of Turkey
Nationalbibliothek 14. University Library of Belgrade
5. National Library of Finland 15. University of Innsbruck
6. Staats- und 16. Landesbibliothek Dr. Friedrich
Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Tessmann
7. Bibliothèque nationale de 17. The British Library
France
8. National Library of Poland
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16. Project Profile: Objectives
1) Selection, Refinement & Aggregation of content
• Make Europeana the largest provider of pan-European newspaper collections
• Provision of more than 18 million newspaper pages to Europeana, many of
those with full-texts
• Support move from images to texts in Europeana
2) Analysis of existing newspaper collections
• Survey of newspaper holdings in Europe
3) Quality Assurance & Best practise recommendations
• Contribute to optimised workflows and data aggregation infrastructures
• Provide best practice recommendations for digitization, refinement, workflows,
metadata etc. and evaluation tools
4) Presentation and full-text search
• Improve access to newspaper collections within Europeana
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17. 1) Selection, Refinement & Aggregation of content
• Aggregation of 18 million pages of digitised
newspapers to Europeana and to The
European Library
• 8 million pages “as is” (content providers)
• 10 million refined pages: OCR (UIBK,
Austria) www.europeana.eu/
• 2 million refined pages: OCR/OLR (article
segmentation) (CCS, Germany)
• Analysis of available digital newspaper
collections and selection of subsets
suitable for refinement
www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/
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18. 1) Refinement – OCR and OLR
• 10 million refined pages:
OCR (UIBK, Austria)
• 2 million refined pages:
OCR/OLR (article segmentation)
(CCS, Germany)
• UIBK enriches the OCR with structural information CCS: Column recognition, article segmentation
from their Document Understanding Platform
• CCS produces OCR and verification of column
recognition, zoning, article segmentation, and page
class recognition
• CCS provides libraries with a client technology for
manual correction of recognition and segmentation
results
UIBK: Detection of headings, footnotes, etc.
Table of contents extraction
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19. 1) Refinement - Named Entity Recognition
• KB provides named entities recognition (NER) for material from up to
three languages (Dutch, English, and German)
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20. 2) Analysis of existing digitised newspaper collections
• Project partners and others will be contacted until summer 2012 to
analyse the extent of digitised newspapers collections at their institutions
• Results will be embedded in “Zeitschriftendatenbank” of
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Union Catalogue of Serials)
• Potential new partners for the extension of the network will be
suggested by survey
• May also be useful to judge technical status of digitised data and as part
of gathering descriptive metadata
• If you hold digital newspaper collection and like to participate in the
survey  please contact: survey@europeana-newspapers.eu/
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21. 3) Analysis of work & Best Practise Recommendations
• Analysis of metadata formats in use by libraries in digitisation projects
• Align metadata models with the METS/ALTO standard and release best
practise recommendation on how to apply these formats in newspaper
digitisation and refinement
• Usability of the recommendation will be tested through an evaluation
cycle
• Provide recommendations on best practices for refinement of digitized
newspaper collections for Europeana
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22. 4) Presentation & Access to full-texts
• Within the lifetime of the project, a content browser
will be built within TEL portal so that users can …
• Search full text, e.g.
• by search term,
• by named entities
• by collections of newspapers
• by date ….
• See newspaper images
• Be linked to relevant library sources
• This browser will be built in TEL during project;
and exported to Europeana after the project
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23. 5) Dissemination
• Objectives:
• Establishment of publicity
• Increasing usage of Europeana
• Awareness raising among target groups
• Tasks:
1. Media Communication
2. Workshops and conferences
• Three main dissemination workshops
• National information days
• Network extension
3. Exploitation
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24. Check it out!
• http://www.europeana-newspapers.eu/ WEBSITE
• http://www.facebook.com/EuropeanaNewspapers FB SITE
• http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4425919 LinkedIn
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25. Thank you for your attention!
Aleš Pekárek, LIBER
ales.pekarek@kb.nl
www.europeana-newspapers.eu/