General

Project

Within the framework of the project retro.seals.ch, scientific journals are retrodigitized and made available via internet.

The E-Archiving project (2005-2008) dealt with questions about long-term availability of scholarly contents in digital form. One subproject was the digitization of printed journals and the establishment of a platform for the management and presentation of the contents. Within the framework of the project retro.seals.ch, which is supported by E-bib.ch: Swiss Electronic Library from 2008 to 2011, the retrodigitization of scientific journals can be continued.

It is an initiative within the innovation and cooperation project E-bib: Swiss Electronic Library which is supported by the Swiss university conference and the ETH Board from 1.8.2008 until 30.6.2011.

The project is implemented by the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries. This institution is the grouping of the Swiss university libraries (cantonal universities, ETH-Domain, universities of applied sciences, universities of teacher education) as well as other institutions within the library sector like the Swiss National Library. The main function of the Consortium is the internationally competitive provision of electronic information for research and teaching in Switzerland, while a cost-effective consortial licensing of numerous electronic information products is its priority. In addition to that, the Consortium conducts several projects which support this main function.

Implementation and organization

Negotiation: management of legal, financial and organizational matters.
Digitization: conduction of scanning process, data storage and processing, OCR.
Indexing: manual indexing of relevant metadata and reconstruction of the journal's structure.
Presentation: creation of a test repository, integration of the data into the productive repository.

Further information can be found in the brochure which is addressed to associations who are interested in the digitization of their journal.

Research and availability

The double indexing (OCR and manual indexing of metadata) provides various possibilities for research: apart from the simple Google-like full text search, users can refine their search by using different filters or consult the author's index for the search of particular persons. Of course it is also possible to simply browse the contents of the volumes. Apart from the displaying on the screen, every article and every volume can be downloaded in PDF format. The entire web surface is available in German, French and English.

Technology

For the online presentation the Content Management System Agora is deployed which provides various modules for the management of heterogeneous data types in an integrated system. The system is managed by the Consortium, while the technical infrastructure is provided by the ETH-Bibliothek.

The deployment of XML allows an easy and comprehensive data exchange with other information systems.

The linkage with other offers and the integration in the search facilities of E-lib.ch (Swiss Electronic Library), guarantee an optimal screening of the content.

Statements

«The linkage with other offers and the integration in the search facilities of E-lib.ch (Swiss Electronic Library), guarantee an optimal screening of the content.»

(Dr. Wolfram Neubauer, director of the ETH-Bibliothek, translation)

«Not only are the journals made available via Internet but they are in a whole virtually publicly declared as national objects of cultural value.»