Problems and possibilities of digital newspaper and periodical archives

Smits, Thomas

doi:10.18352/ts.317

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…In other words: researchers should re-contextualize the information to which they now have direct digital access. 26 Therefore, the research for this article is centered on articles and advertisements in four newspapers from Melbourne and Sydney-the two largest cities of the Australian colonies around Many of the hits in Trove do not provide information concerning the two central questions of this article. As the ILN became popular, Australian publications started to clip articles from the magazine on a large scale.…”

Section: Methods and Periodizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking for The Illustrated London News in Australian Digital Newspapers

Smits¹

2016

Media History

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This article will demonstrate that digital newspaper archives can be used to shed new light on the historical readership of nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. The digital newspaper archive of Australia (Trove) was used to study the distribution and reception of the renowned Illustrated London News (ILN) in the Australian colonies between 1842 and 1872. As a result of this research, this article shows that around 17,000 copies of the magazine reached the Australian colonies by each mail in 1862. This corresponds to 8-11% of the total circulation of the ILN at that time so making it the most widely read British publication in the Australian colonies. By means of a case study into the colonial readership of the ILN, this article will argue that the magazine was an important building block in the formation of the imagined communities both of Britain and its dominions in the period between 1842 and 1872. KEYWORDS historical readership; digital newspaper archives; Illustrated London News; imagined communities; Trove To our colonies this Journal has an interest, which can be claimed by no other. The Australian or the Canadian settled in remote districts, (…), looks forward with more pleasure

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Section: Methods and Periodizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking for The Illustrated London News in Australian Digital Newspapers

Smits¹

2016

Media History

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“…61 OCR-mistakes are for example a special problem in almost all texts produced before 1850, because of the inconsistency in typographic form and layout in the older periods. 62 One can see the consequences in the digitised collection of historical newspapers in the National Library of the Netherlands. It is shown that the accuracy level of the OCR increases considerably in time: the older the original bearer the more mistakes it contains.…”

Section: Instruction Video For Delpher Online Database (In Dutch)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Humanities and Media History

Wijfjes

2017

TMG

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Digital humanities is an important challenge for more traditional humanities disciplines to take on, but advanced digital methods for analysis are not often used to answer concrete research questions in these disciplines. This article makes use of extensive digital collections of historical newspapers to discuss the promising, yet challenging relationship between digital humanities and historical research. The search for long-term patterns in digital historical research appropriately positions itself within previous approaches to historical research, but the digitization of sources presents many practical and theoretical questions and obstacles. For this reason, any digital source used in historical research should be critically reviewed beforehand. Digital newspaper research raises new issues and presents new possibilities to better answer traditional questions.

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“…While various literature has focused on digital reading habits, there is scant related research solely on digital periodical reading (Wang et al, 2016). Only a few studies pay attention to digital approaches to periodicals and digitalized newspapers (Cordell et al, 2016; Smits, 2014). Therefore, this study attempts to fill this research gap by focusing on studying changes in the reading behaviour of periodicals on mobile devices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in reading behaviour of periodicals on mobile devices: A comparative study

Ding

Lam

Chiu

et al. 2020

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science

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Mobile devices not only bring convenience to aspects of life but also change people’s behaviour in their daily lives, in particular reading. While most of the studies focus on reading books, there are few systematic publications primarily focusing on electronic periodicals, especially comparing the different needs of patrons from different faculties. Through an online questionnaire, the authors explored whether and how university patrons of the University of Hong Kong changed their reading behaviour of e-periodicals in the context of mobile devices. Six reading patterns were investigated: reading frequency, types of periodicals, preference of mobile devices, reading time spent, reading time slot and reading location. The authors purposefully compare subjects selected from three faculties (Education, Engineering and Science) to examine whether research and learning requirements affect their behaviours. The analysis found that reading patterns did indeed change after patrons adopted mobile devices to read periodicals. There are also some statistically significant differences among the faculties investigated, reflecting their different information needs. The findings can help academic libraries review their periodical subscription policies and reading promotion schemes to satisfy various patrons’ needs.

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Problems and possibilities of digital newspaper and periodical archives

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

Looking for The Illustrated London News in Australian Digital Newspapers

Looking for The Illustrated London News in Australian Digital Newspapers

Digital Humanities and Media History

Changes in reading behaviour of periodicals on mobile devices: A comparative study

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