Leeuwarder Courant

Industry : Media & Publishing

Location : The Netherlands

Project : Digital Archive

Volume : 2.223.976 Pages

www.lc.nl

271 years of Newspaper history Online

In 2023, the Dutch newspaper De Leeuwarder Courant celebrates its 271st anniversary. No other newspaper can claim a longer publication history under the same title. Every day, avid readers get their news from one of the most respected newspapers in the Netherlands, either in print or via the online edition.

The Project

X-CAGO, a media intelligence solutions and technology company based in Roermond, the Netherlands, is the exclusive provider of digital and archiving services for the publisher of De Leeuwarder Courant. The contract includes making the latest issue available online, as well as digitising and making available online almost 1 million pages of news from the 271 years the newspaper has been published. The first issue of the newspaper was printed in July 1752.

As today’s news is tomorrow’s history, the cultural heritage contained in the archives of De Leeuwarder Courant is considered one of the most important historical sources in the Netherlands. The newspaper’s archive includes seminal events of history including the French Revolution, Napoleon, the Titanic, Hitler, Stalin and the World Cup – but also obituaries and local news.

The initiator of this project is the Foundation Digital Archive Leeuwarder Courant, a cooperation of De Leeuwarder Courant, Tresoar and the Frisian Historical and Literary Centre. Digitising the vault of the Leeuwarder Courant has long been on the agenda of all project partners, and X-CAGO’s superior technologies were key to making the rich content of this extraordinary newspaper archive accessible.

X-CAGO’s approach, which differs from that of many other providers, is to scan directly from bound books and other hard copies rather than digitising from microfilm. Microfilm has many disadvantages – lack of colour, lack of authenticity and inferior optical character recognition (OCR). The Foundation heeded X-CAGO’s advice and reputation and opted to digitise from the original sources.

The Solution: X-CAGO Digital Archive

By digitising the almost one million newspaper pages from hard copy, a rich source of Dutch and Frisian culture and heritage is unlocked and made available to the public via the internet. Moreover, this content is preserved for future generations, making it equally accessible to journalists, scientists, politicians, bankers, students and parents, whether it is news from today or an article from 250 years ago.

Diversity: The content covers several languages, including Dutch, Frisian and French, and looks at the different uses of language over the last 271 years.

X-CAGO is carrying out this project with a turnkey end-to-end solution using the most advanced video scanners currently available on the market. This includes:

  • Scanning the newspaper pages;

  • Segmentation of the pages into articles and advertisements;

  • Labelling of headlines, captions and images;

  • Tracking of the reading order and publication on the internet

A recurring problem when digitising historical content is changes in spelling over time. In addition, sometimes completely different words with different meanings may have been used. Without updating spelling and language usage, significant problems can arise in finding the information sought. To solve these problems, X-CAGO developed its own web-based solution called ‘Archive ExPress’. As a result of this project, X-CAGO now includes Frisian in the list of supported languages. ‘Archive ExPress’ also has the ability to eliminate typical OCR errors.

Achievements

  • The number of unique visitors per month increased by 71.4%
  • Monthly page views grew by 216.7%
  • The average number of page views per visit increased by 200%
     
     

The Impact

  • Digitised nearly 1 million historical newspaper pages
  • Made 250+ years of cultural heritage accessible online
  • Enabled access for both the public and professionals
  • Supported multiple languages, including Dutch, Frisian and French
  • Delivered a full end-to-end digitisation solution
  • Enabled article-level access and structured metadata
  • Improved search despite historical spelling and OCR issue

Start a Conversation

Publishers and Media Companies worldwide trust X-CAGO as their technology partner for content conversion, digital archiving, web crawling, and a wide range of innovative solutions. Get in touch to discover how we can help you unlock new revenue streams and enhance your digital offerings.

Schedule a call