THE PROJECT FOR THE DIGITISATION OF THE PRESS CLIPPINGS LIBRARY OF THE CROATIAN HISTORY MUSEUM

Cilj projekta digitalizacije hemeroteke Hrvatskoga povijesnog muzeja je omogućiti kvalitetniji pristup njezinu sadržaju. Nakon završetka ovog projekta, sljedeća bi faza trebala biti primjena optičkog prepoznavanja znakova u povijesnim dokumentima. Iako je projekt digitalizacije hemeroteke HPM-a još u tijeku, pokušali smo prikazati koji se problemi pojavljuju pri primjeni optičkog prepoznavanja znakova u muzejskome dokumentacijskom fonduThe Croatian History Museum has collected materials for its press clippings library for more than 60 years; today it numbers about 2000 items, now available though a museum documentation processing application. Items that relate to events during the Homeland War are one of the special features of the holdings, especially those related to the destruction of cultural properties during that war. In work lasting numbers of years it has been shown that the museum press clippings library is a rich source of information for various themes, which gave rise to the idea that the use of it should be extended. Bearing in mind the sensitivity of the material of paper and its restricted accessibility, a process for digitising the whole of the press clippings archives of the museum was started. One of the basic objectives of the project was to make the collection more accessible to a wider group of users, not only for reading, but also for searching, within the text. The paper shows how tools for digitisation and OCR are chosen as well as implementation in an application for the computer processing of secondary museum documentation. Listed are the challenges that appeared during the project, and recommendations that stemmed from them