Aquinas Newspaper Digitalization Project

The complete run of the Aquinas student newspaper will soon be available online. The Aquinas was inaugurated in newspaper format in 1930 and, because of inherent conservation problems with newsprint, many issues have become brittle.  Working with OCLC and Bethlehem based Preservation Resources, Weinberg Library and the University Archives will microfilm and scan the original Aquinas newspaper.  The scanned images will be hosted on an OCLC WWW server and will be keyword searchable using a software application called Olive.

 

In the past couple of years software has been developed that allows keyword searching of scanned newspaper images. The Olive software analyzes and indexes the different parts of the newspaper such as articles, graphics, and advertisements. This process allows more complex searching capabilities. Consequently, someone looking only for photographs of a certain event can limit the search to graphics. Olive Software allows the user to view the newspaper in its original layout and typeface. Olive automatically indexes the newspaper making keyword searching of the entire newspaper easy to accomplish. A search results page lists articles matching the keywords. The results page contains thumbnail images of the titles of the relevant articles. The user clicks on the article and the search terms are highlighted within the text. The articles can then be read and/or printed by the user. Olive promises full access to the existing run of The Aquinas for alumni, students, faculty, staff, administrators, and the general public from any Internet connected computer.

 

Michael Knies