Canning paper archives
The LAURIN software package is designed with four helpful tools to assist newspaper archivists in their selection, processing and assorting of newspaper articles. The LAURIN software I, known as LibCLip is the actual image acquisition system. Developed by an Austrian company, the LibClip can essentially scan page sizes from A4 to A0, and effectively copy the required article from the surrounding page data, keeping the original format and look of the article intact. The article is then OCR corrected and processed, ready to be imported into a database via the ODBC gateway. Additionally, this automated process allows for the recording of bibliographic references, such as title, author, caption etc. The LAURIN Software II package is the local database and indexing tool. Based on the ORACLE 8i database management systems, it has been designed to run on a Windows NT or, Windows 98 platform and its main functionality is to administer the indexing of articles and allocate thesaurus terms to the articles. The core application of LAURIN is the Software III, which features the Thesaurus and Thesaurus Management tools. Developed by the University of Innsbruck, it has been designed for complete multilingual functionality, and has a number of important aspects, including data that can be compiled with inter-related schemata. For example, names of people can be cross-referenced with geographical locations or institutions and can be further connected to subject headings. Currently, LAURIN has some 30, 000 persons, 6,000 subjects and 200,000 geographical entries, making a total of 540, 000 relations currently used. Finally, the LAURIN Software IV, is the Search Interface. What database would be complete without this important feature? To date, the search is based on HTML interface only, but development is underway to improve the system with more advanced search features. Ultimately, LAURIN provides graphic based, drag-and-drop functionality by which to pre-process article data, (according to any desired criteria, such as date of publication, issue, page number and even picture content), construct an exacting electronic facsimile of the article with cross references in tact and in accordance with ISO standards, as well as a highly efficient means to enter this information into an electronic, searchable database.
