Microfilm room, Koninklijke Bibliotheek
In the Netherlands more than 7000 national, regional and local newspapers have been published over the past four centuries. Tens of kilometres of newspapers are stored in various archives and libraries in the Netherlands, but also abroad. Newspapers are printed on low-quality paper for daily use. Consequently, the newspaper archives are largely in a poor state and are scarcely accessible to the public.
For academics, newspapers are an important primary source for research into politics and economics and into opinions about art, literature and science. Newspapers are particularly suitable for diachronic research. Changes can be followed over the course of time. Newspapers are not only an important source of information within scientific disciplines such as political science, (art) history and sociology, but also within linguistics. With the input of newspaper contents large text corpora can be created which are important for research into the use of the Dutch language.
Since the 1970s newspapers have been preserved by means of microfilming, for example within the framework of Metamorfoze, the KB conservation programme. Subsequently, some of the newspapers are accessible to the general public. This accessibility is, however, limited: researchers must thumb through the original material, or the microfilm, page by page.
With the digitization of a selection from the newspaper archives (including the first newspaper from 1618, up to newspapers from the twentieth century) the Databank of Digital Daily newspapers will make eight million pages accessible to everyone, via the Internet, free of charge.