Papers Past launches new Ngā Tānga Reo Māori collection, and Swiss National Library Collection hits 10 million pages

The Papers Past collection delivers digitised full-text New Zealand and Pacific newspapers, magazines and journals, letters and diaries, parliamentary papers and now books from the 19th and 20th centuries. Over time, it has grown to include over one million documents across these formats, with close to 8 million total pages.

The Veridian team has been working with Papers Past since 2006, ingesting data into and customising their use of the Veridian digital collection software to help create Papers Past on the web. Recently, we spoke with Melanie Lovell-Smith and Emerson Vandy from the National Library of New Zealand on their process to create and launch their new Ngā Tānga Reo Māori (Māori language publications) collection and books interface.

In the case study, we cover the origins of the project, how the collection was built (covering data processing, digitisation, creation and design of the interface), the additional considerations for the team including cultural sensibilities, navigability and search functionality, and the significance of and future plans for this collection.

In exciting news, the Swiss National Library Collection has skyrocketed in size from 6.5 million to 10 million pages within just one year, making it the fastest-growing and now largest single Veridian collection (as at publish date).

This achievement is due to the momentum and streamlined processes the Swiss team have cultivated, allowing the collection of digitised Swiss newspapers from 1692-onwards to grow at an impressive rate.

Veridian works with the Swiss National Library in an ongoing capacity, providing responsive assistance focused on ingesting the data and expanding the index.