The Project | Objective
Dutch Prints Online is a collaboration between the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) and the University Libraries of Amsterdam (UBA) and Leiden (UBL). These institutions have each offered part of their collection to be digitised, in order to start developing a digital collection of books printed in the Netherlands before 1800.
Nearly 10,000 different titles from the Dutch-speaking region have been selected from the period between 1781 and 1800, which together amount to approximately 2 million pages. The titles will be digitally available as from mid-2010. In the future, this web service will be expanded with additional digitised books and new options.
Digitisation
The importance of digitising scholarly sources is obvious. Without source material, research in the humanities is unthinkable. Opening up these sources electronically hugely adds to the efficiency, effectiveness and reliability of research and offers opportunities for entirely new forms of innovative research. Digitisation will help to bring new scholarly breakthroughs within reach, but this does require very large text corpora to be available. The objective of Dutch Prints Online is to make such large files available.
Background
The Amsterdam (UBA) and Leiden (UBL) university libraries and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) possess a large number of similar and complementary Special Collections, which partially overlap (where printed materials are concerned). They are old, printed publications in a wide array of languages from various countries. In addition to printed works, there is also a large collection of written materials in the libraries, varying from mediaeval manuscripts, later manuscripts (including scholars’ and artists’ archives) to over a million letters. Furthermore, there are collections of maps and atlases, prints, photographs, decorated paper, bindings and typographic materials.
By now, a good portion of the catalogues of special collections has been made digitally available to the public: printed works (books, journals) up to 1800 in the STCN (Short Title Catalogue, Netherlands) and letters in the CEN (Catalogus Epistularum Neerlandicarum). Medieval Manuscripts in Dutch Collections (www.mmdc.nl) was created for mediaeval manuscripts.
In late October 2005, the Special Collections departments of the UBA, UBL and KB launched the ‘Project Initiative - National Infrastructure for Making Special Collections Available Digitally’ . The project proposes to have a plan developed for an online library for the Humanities consisting of completely digitised items from the special collections of the institutions involved. By digitising the Special Collections of these three libraries and, at a later stage, also those of other (university) libraries and making them accessible to the public, a major corpus of otherwise virtually inaccessible texts is put at the disposal of research and, in addition, secondary and tertiary education. Dutch Prints Online is the first step towards creating this online library.
Digitising Early Prints
The term ‘Special Collections’ is used for very diverse material that is rare and valuable for any reason whatever, and is also often vulnerable. The material from the Special Collections is being kept in special depots, equipped with specific types of security and climate control. Books and other (paper) materials from the Special Collections cannot be borrowed, but can only be viewed under supervision in the library’s reading rooms. This means that such works are relatively inaccessible to users, also because the works cannot be placed under the scanner or photocopying machine without any protective measures. Therefore, these books will also be digitised with the utmost care. For instance, prior to digitisation, the books are assessed one by one as regards their physical condition and they are scanned using a special ‘book cradle’. This device ensures that the binding – and in particular the spine – is not burdened excessively or is even damaged.