To verify the work so far, we recently employed usability experts to assess the website and suggest improvements before a final version is released in November. The results have just been released, and are presented below as well as in the full Usability Testing Report.

The main points to come out of the testing were as follows

• The browser was received positively. Users loved the diversity of content (many different titles, countries and libraries represented).
• Some features need to be made more intuitive or obvious. The advanced search options, for example, were often missed by testers.
• The most requested feature was the ability to download or save a newspaper. The report notes that “Much of the value of the site to participants was provided by the images of the documents. … As no download facility is provided, this led to some frustration and undermined the overall potential value of the site for some participants”

How The Tests Were Run
The usability tests were run with 12 researchers, who were recruited by colleagues in the following partner libraries: the British Library, the Dr. Friedrich Teßmann Library, the Austrian National Library, the National Library of Latvia and the National Library of Finland. The test users were asked to perform the following tasks:

1. Explore the landing page
2. Perform a basic keyword search and find material related to a specific topic (eg. investigate the history of a capital city)
3. Refine your search results using the options provided (eg. from your search results, find only newspapers that were published in a certain country)
4. Search within a date range (eg. find newspapers published between 1810 and 1820)
5. Search for a specific date (eg. newspapers published on the birth dates of your parents)
6. Find newspapers by title and region (eg. find all newspapers published in Austria)

Positive First Impression
Our testers were broadly positive about the historic newspapers browser, and understood the basic layout and functionality of the site. They valued the presentation of content from many sources and appreciated features such as the map overview, the ability to browse by date and title and the full-text content of individual newspaper pages.

When asked to highlight 3 things they liked about the website, common responses were:

• The breadth and depth of content
• Ease of performing a basic search
• Browse by title option on landing page
• Map view
• Ease with which the newspaper images could be rotated and re-sized

Most Tasks Easily Performed
Overall, the website received high marks, and users were easily able to complete the tasks asked of them. Only Task 4 (search within a date range) was found to be difficult because users found it difficult to locate the controls for searching within two specific dates.

Issues To Work On
The usability testing naturally highlighted areas that need improvement. Testers couldn’t quickly locate the ‘Further Search Options’ on the homepage. They were also confused by the purpose of the This Day In History carousel. Many assumed it was a static illustration, rather than an interactive element.

As they dug deeper into the site, the testers noted that they would like to be able to configure and re-order their search results. They expected to be able to download, save and print individual newspaper pages, whereas the current browser only allows people to view newspapers.

Requested Features
When asked which additional features the site should provide, the most common answer was the ability to download images or even entire documents. Other suggestions included a:

• Clear route for giving feedback about the site
• Description of the benefits and additional functionalities available to registered users
• Section highlighting recently added content

As part of our mission to make the historic newspapers browser the best it can be, we will be conducting a further round of usability testing. This will help ensure that any changes we make have had the desired effect.

We also welcome your thoughts. Have you used our newspapers browser? How would you improve it? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The European Library is the project partner responsible for developing our historic newspapers browser. One of the biggest challenges they have faced while building this browser is the storage of extremely large files containing digitised newspaper images.

Why are the images so large? The process starts with the libraries undertaking the digitisation work. They create individual master files of each page and each of these files ranges between 10 and 50 MB.

These images are then made available to The European Library, which in turn shares them with researchers via its historic newspapers browser. To make the images useful to researchers, each image needs to be up to 2.5MB in size. Anything less won’t do since words, characters and images would be too blurry to examine properly.

If we assume an average image size of 1.5MB, making 10 million images available would demand a total server space of around 14 Terabytes. This is not sustainable in the long run.

Improved Image Retrieval Technique
The European Library technical team has come up with a new solution. Instead of centrally harvesting all the images and storing these on The European Library’s servers, numerous libraries have made it possible to directly access their image servers. This means that each library’s own hardware space, where suitably sized images are already stored, can be utilised. When a user searches on The European Library site and asks to see a particular image, a request is then sent to out to the original library to dynamically grab an image from the source library’s server and bring it into view.

Take this 1849 issue of the Viennese newspaper, Wiener Zeitung, for example. This digitised newspaper from the Austrian National Library allows the user to have full functionality over the image. One can zoom in and out and fully explore the image within The European Library interface even though the digital version remains housed on a server in Vienna.

This approach has another advantage in that it lets the curator of the original material maintain control over the digitised versions. Lack of control, as cited by many technical managers, is one of the main reasons as to why they are reluctant to share content with third party publishers.

Challenges of Image Retrieval
However, not all libraries partaking in the Europeana Newspapers project appreciate this approach. This is because a fair amount of effort is required to allow images to be technically retrieved in this manner.

For example, pages from the below 1914 issue of a Latvian newspaper entitled ‘Drywa’ (from the National Library of Latvia) are pre-harvested and stored on The European Library server itself.

Alastair Dunning, Programme Manager at The European Library is excited about the implementation of this image retrieval technique: “As knowledge of this technique increases, I imagine it will become more popular than pre-assembling a collection and having to go through the process of harvesting and then storing the collection, which is time-consuming and costly.”

“This solution implies that third party aggregators will be able to curate, showcase and publish specific collections drawn from a variety of sources. Content will no longer remain trapped in institutional silos and can instead be more easily seen and contextualised in a variety of different settings,” says Alastair.

Where Can I Find the Europeana Newspapers Tool?
The prototype of the Europeana Newspapers tool is now available on The European Library homepage. From there, the user can search for specific historic newspaper titles and browse by various critera such as issue date or country.

Please note that the tool will be user tested in April to assess functionality, report bugs and map the way forward in terms of the tool’s technical requirements. A beta version with improved functionality will be released later this year.

It has a great deal of experience in making digital newspapers available online. Already, thousands of its own digitised newspapers are available via its Historical Newspapers (Historische Kranten) portal.

Today, we’re taking a look at the content that will be contributed to the Europeana Newspapers Project by the National Library of the Netherlands. For a closer look at each paper, simply click on the image and a gallery will appear.

[ezcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””][/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end id=”” class=”multicolumn” style=””]This newspaper from 1896 reports on the first Olympic Games since the year 393. The article states that the organisers did not want it to be an old-fashioned event, so they added gymnastics, swimming, tennis, cricket, cycling, shooting and fencing to the program. There was no one competing on behalf of the Netherlands, but luckily this did not stop the publishers from writing a two page article on the Olympic Games.[/ezcol_1half_end]

[ezcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””][/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end id=”” class=”multicolumn” style=””]This article is from the oldest newspaper on the newspaper website of the KB. The original lies in the Royal Library of Sweden and they gave permission for the KB to digitise the newspapers for publication. The KB wanted to digitise the paper because it includes an article about one of the most important events in the (Dutch) Reformed Church, namely the Synod of Dordrecht. At this meeting, it was also decided to translate the bible into Dutch for the first time.[/ezcol_1half_end]

[ezcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””][/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end id=”” class=”multicolumn” style=””]This article reports the death of president Lincoln on April 14th, 1865. The newspaper was only published in the Netherlands some two weeks later, on April 30th, 1865. The article presents a number of telegrams about the event and the death of not only president Lincoln, but also that of Frederic Seward, the son of Secretary of State William Seward. He was attacked in his house at the same time as Lincoln, by Lewis Powell. However, it is nice to note that Frederic Seward survived and lived to be 84.[/ezcol_1half_end]