Improving the discovery of European historic newspapers

The Europeana Newspapers Project is about improving access to digitised historic newspapers through the use of refinement techniques and the launch of a browsing tool. Twenty three libraries across Europe are contributing content and by the end of the project in January 2015 users will be able to search ten million pages of historic newspapers and millions of metadata records. Named entities and structural elements of the newspaper layout will have also been identified in two million of the pages. The focus of this paper is the user response to the Europeana Newspapers browser developed by The European Library, which is currently available as prototype. In April the tool will be tested by several user groups and the results will help assess its functionality and how well it meets users’ needs and expectations. The feedback from the user testing will inform the release of an improved beta version of the browser later this year. Taking into account the results from the user testing, the paper will reflect on the user experience of discovering content via the historic newspapers browser on The European Library website. In particular, it will consider the user response to the creation of a specifically European interface for historic newspapers, assess how successful the tool is for searching across European newspaper content and the implications it may have for the users’ investigative practices. To conclude, the paper will emphasise the value of the resource created by Europeana Newspapers and its intended users. Researchers are one of the main user groups for digitised European historic newspapers and some of their research interests have been highlighted in a number of interviews published on the Project blog. Furthermore, the dataset of European newspapers creates opportunities for new discoveries for digital humanities scholars.