E-Papers

In fulfilment of its legal mandate, the German National Library launched a pilot project for the collection, cataloguing, provision and archiving of "E-Papers" in December 2009 (E-Paper Project). These are layout-faithful digital versions of printed daily newspapers which are increasingly being offered on the websites of newspaper publishers. During the course of this project a workflow is to be developed for the automatic collection of E-Paper editions based on a sample of selected newspapers. The system will then gradually be expanded to up to 300 different E-Papers and finally go into routine operation.  There are two main aims here. Firstly to improve the cataloguing of daily newspapers and their provision and use in the reading rooms of the German National Library on a long-term basis. And secondly to reassess the current practice of filming daily newspapers; long-term preservation methods should be investigated for the digital editions.