Pressing Matters. Digitising, Unlocking and Researching Belgium’s Historical Press Collections

This volume is a result of the conference Belgian Print Media in the Age of Digitisation: Current Challenges of Research into the History of Media and Journalism in Belgium, organised by the research centre CAMIlle (KBR-ULB) in 2023. The essays in this volume reflect on both the opportunities and the challenges presented by the digitisation of printed media, addressing issues such as collection management, metadata, data quality, OCR, copyright restrictions, and the integration of digital humanities methods.

Table of Contents

Brecht Deseure, Pressing Matters. Introduction

Part 1. State of the Art

• Kaspar Beelen, Reflections on a Workshop: Research Challenges and Opportunities for Belgian Print Media in the Age of Digitisation
• Christoph De Spiegeleer, Digital Access to Historical Newspapers in Belgium and Abroad. From Endangered Heritage to a Gold Mine for Machine
  Learning Technology

Part 2. Digitisation: Institutions, Collections, Workflows

• Brecht Deseure, Frédéric Lemmers & Sally Chambers, Belgian Press Heritage Online. Digitisation of Printed Media Collections at KBR
• Sophia Rochmes, Nieuwe Tijdingen: Towards a Newspaper Preservation Programme for Flanders
• Anthony Leroy & Ingrid Mayeur, Transforming ULB Libraries Digitisation Service: Going Beyond Scanning Our Own Collections to Also Become a Data Provider for Our Researchers
• Roxannne Wyns & Katrien Weyns, From Paper to ‘Paper’. Facilitating Structural Digitisation and Reuse of Print Media Preserved in a Heritage Institution
• Joris Colla, News from Around the Church. The Participatory Digitisation and Contextual Disclosure of Local Parish Journals
• Jacques Gillen, Newspapers in the Mundaneum’s Collection
• Nick Coorevits, Historische Kranten: 20 Years of Digitising and Unlocking Newspapers in the Westhoek Region
• Alexander Soetaert & Hilde Van Parys, The Digitisation of Historical Newspapers in Bruges Public Library: Experiences and Perspectives

Part 3. Research Projects

• Morgane Ott & Sébastien Hermans, Constructing a Digital Corpus of Interwar Belgian Magazines to Investigate the Representations of Fine Arts. An Artpresse Case Study
• Erwin Dejasse, Studying Comics in the Belgian Press through Digitised Corpora: Challenges and Opportunities
• Florence Le Cam, Brecht Deseure & Max De Wilde, CAMIlle. A Research Centre on the History of Belgian Journalism
• Sébastien de Valeriola, News Nuggets: Mining Imperfect Historical Press Data

Bibliography