German 17th Century Newspaper in Swedish Libraries

Newspaper in Sweden

The Kungliga bibliotekt

The Kungliga bibliotekt

As the period of my archival and library travels is starting, I thought it would be nice to give an insight and clues about where to find 17th century newspaper and how to work with them. My fist trip brought me in middle of November to Stockholm where I was to work with the newspaper holdings of the Kungliga bibliotekt. Situated right in the middle of the historic Östermalm district in the Swedish capital, this legal deposit library holds around 20 million books in Swedish and the personal archive of notable Swedes such as Astrid Lindgren, August Strindberg and Dag Hammarskjöld. But there is more to find for a historian interested in the history of the newspaper.

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Puzzling Places: The Broadcasting of local News in Dutch Newspapers

News from Pferumbt, detail. Taken from: Broer Jansz. Tijdinghen uyt verscheyde Quartieren, Amsterdam: 01.06.1622 (Dahl No 100)

News from Pferumbt, detail. Taken from: Broer Jansz. Tijdinghen uyt verscheyde Quartieren, Amsterdam: 01.06.1622 (Dahl No 100)

Unlike the last post, this one is going to be a more puzzling than revealing. After starting to go deeper into the coverage of Dutch newspapers for the last three weeks, I found a number of reports that I could not make sense of. Sometimes the lack of context information makes the news hard to understand. However, in a number of cases the place name of the news present difficulties. As someone who is more familiar (and comfortable) with reading today´s Dutch, the written language of the seventeenth century seems to differ in a number of cases that make a simple google search for a place name redundant. In the hope, that perhaps some of the readers can make sense of the place names, I have collected and displayed here all the news that I cannot make any sense of in terms localizing the individual places. I decided to turn to follower power on these cases: if you can help out with any of these place please get in contact via the comments section or at jh230@st-andrews.ac.uk

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Meeting the readers’ expectations. The design of early printed newspapers (1605–1680)

Die Dorfpost [The rural post]. Lithograpy, R. Weibezahl, around 1840

Die Dorfpost [The rural post]. Lithograpy, R. Weibezahl, around 1840

How did printers designed Early Modern newspapers in the 17th century and which possibilities were available to meet the expectations of their reader? For answering this question, I have decided to analyse Dutch and German newspapers out of two reasons: firstly, they begin to appear almost at the same time and the typographical schemes they developed served as patterns for later printers. Joris Veselers’ English “Corrant from Italy, Germany” served as a role model in terms of layout for the first English newspapers. Secondly, newspapers printed in these two countries followed distinctive typographical conventions. While Dutch gazette typography reflected the standards of pamphlets and broadsheets, German printers orientated themselves towards the layout of the book. I am going to analyse those features that made these Early Modern newspapers visually stand apart from other media. By that we can ask, how printers met their reader’s expectation through the design of the new medium. Continue reading

IBG Young Scholars Meeting: The Book as Cultural Artefact and Economic Good, Erlangen, 01.08. – 02.08.2013

Every year, the IBG (Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft) hosts a conference that brings together scholars of the study of the book. This year in November, plagiarism will be the frame. In the past the association has held conferences on the topic of  the e-book, digital libraries, the children´s book and many other.

One of the features of the association is that i gives young scholars the chance to discuss their ongoing PhD projects and research findings on the annually held young scholars meeting. I am pleased that we in Erlangen will be hosting the meeting this year and I am looking forward to papers on the following aspects of the book as cultural artefact and economic good: Continue reading

Being new in the field: Current projects in newspaper history

TDC Newspaper Staff 1880-90s © CC BY-SA Flickr-User Marion Dross

TDC Newspaper Staff 1880-90s © CC-BY-SA Flickr-User Marion Dross 

Not too long ago, in November 2011, I started working on something that would later become the topic of my master´s thesis. In a course on early modern pamphlet production I had to deal with the “Neue Zeitung”, something that was – at this point – relatively new to me. After I took the first few steps in research I got the feeling, that this was a rather old fashioned subject. The output of articles, book chapters or monographs was relatively low, many of those younger publications where still quoting Karl Schottenlohers (in these days) important work. Continue reading

Digitalisierte Zeitungen und OCR: Welche Forschungszugänge erlauben die digitalen Bestände?

Ein eher einfacher Fall der OCR-Bearbeitung © ceslava.com

Wer die Geschichte der Zeitung erforschen will ist darauf angewiesen, sich mit Originalen auseinanderzusetzen. Ein bekanntes Problem ist, dass Zeitungsbestände geografisch weit verteilt sind. Eine Sonderstellung haben hier Frankreich mit der Bibliothèque nationale de France und Großbritannien mit der British Library und der Außenstelle Colindale Newspaper Library. Beiden Bibliotheken stehen für eine lange Geschichte der zentralisierten Zeitungssammlung. Forscher finden hier an zentralem Ort und in kürzester Zeit das, was sie für ihre Arbeit brauchen.

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newspaperhistory

As I am working in a co-tutelle PhD program between the Universities of St Andrews and Erlangen-Nuremberg, I want to point the attention towards newspaper history. My aim is to research on the typographical development of early european newspapers (17th century). This blog aims to communicate the results of my trips to libraries in small portions and with good and illustrational graphical material.