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metadata
annotations_creators:
  - no-annotation
language_creators:
  - expert-generated
language:
  - de
  - fr
  - lb
  - nl
  - la
  - en
license:
  - cc0-1.0
multilinguality:
  - multilingual
size_categories:
  - 100K<n<1M
source_datasets:
  - original
task_categories:
  - text-generation
  - fill-mask
task_ids:
  - language-modeling
  - masked-language-modeling
pretty_name: BnL Newspapers 1841-1879
tags:
  - newspapers
  - 1800-1900
  - lam
dataset_info:
  features:
    - name: publisher
      dtype: string
    - name: paperID
      dtype: string
    - name: title
      dtype: string
    - name: text
      dtype: string
    - name: newpaperTitle
      dtype: string
    - name: date
      dtype: timestamp[ns]
    - name: metsType
      dtype: string
    - name: identifier
      dtype: string
    - name: type
      dtype: string
    - name: creator
      dtype: string
  splits:
    - name: train
      num_bytes: 1605420260
      num_examples: 630709
  download_size: 1027493424
  dataset_size: 1605420260
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: data/train-*

Dataset Card for BnL Newspapers 1841-1879

Table of Contents

Dataset Description

  • Homepage: https://data.bnl.lu
  • Repository:
  • Paper:
  • Leaderboard:
  • Point of Contact: opendata at bnl.etat.lu

Dataset Summary

630.709 articles from historical newspapers (1841-1879) along with metadata and the full text.

21 newspaper titles 24.415 newspaper issues 99.957 scanned pages Transcribed using a variety of OCR engines and corrected using https://github.com/natliblux/nautilusocr (95% threshold) Public Domain, CC0 (See copyright notice)

The newspapers used are:

  • Der Arbeiter (1878)
  • L'Arlequin (1848-1848)
  • L'Avenir (1868-1871)
  • Courrier du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg (1844-1868)
  • Cäcilia (1863-1871)
  • Diekircher Wochenblatt (1841-1848)
  • Le Gratis luxembourgeois (1857-1858)
  • L'Indépendance luxembourgeoise (1871-1879)
  • Kirchlicher Anzeiger für die Diözese Luxemburg (1871-1879)
  • La Gazette du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg (1878)
  • Luxemburger Anzeiger (1856)
  • Luxemburger Bauernzeitung (1857)
  • Luxemburger Volks-Freund (1869-1876)
  • Luxemburger Wort (1848-1879)
  • Luxemburger Zeitung (1844-1845)
  • Luxemburger Zeitung = Journal de Luxembourg (1858-1859)
  • L'Union (1860-1871)
  • Das Vaterland (1869-1870)
  • Der Volksfreund (1848-1849)
  • Der Wächter an der Sauer (1849-1869)
  • D'Wäschfra (1868-1879)

Supported Tasks and Leaderboards

Languages

German, French, Luxembourgish

Dataset Structure

JSONL file zipped.

Data Instances

Data Fields

  • identifier : unique and persistent identifier using ARK for the Article.
  • date : publishing date of the document e.g "1848-12-15".
  • metsType : set to "newspaper".
  • newpaperTitle : title of the newspaper. It is transcribed as in the masthead of the individual issue and can thus change.
  • paperID : local identifier for the newspaper title. It remains the same, even for short-term title changes.
  • publisher : publisher of the document e.g. "Verl. der St-Paulus-Druckerei".
  • title : main title of the article, section, advertisement, etc.
  • text : full text of the entire article, section, advertisement etc. It includes any titles and subtitles as well. The content does not contain layout information, such as headings, paragraphs or lines.
  • creator : author of the article, section, advertisement etc. Most articles do not have an associated author.
  • type : type of the exported data e.g. ARTICLE, SECTION, ADVERTISEMENT, ...

Dataset Creation

The dataset was created by the National library of Luxembourg with the output of its newspaper digitisation program.

Curation Rationale

The selection of newspapers represent the current state of digitisation of the Luxembourg legal deposit collection of newspapers that are in the public domain. That means all newspapers printed in Luxembourg before and including 1879.

Source Data

Printed historical newspapers.

Initial Data Collection and Normalization

The data was created through digitisation. The full digitisation specifications are available at https://data.bnl.lu/data/historical-newspapers/

Annotations

Annotation process

During the digitisation process, newspaper pages were semi-automatically zoned into articles. This was done by external suppliers to the library according to the digitisation specifications.

Who are the annotators?

Staff at the external suppliers.

Personal and Sensitive Information

The dataset contains only data that was published in a newspaper. Since it contains only articles before 1879, no living person is expected to be included.

Considerations for Using the Data

Social Impact of Dataset

Discussion of Biases

The biases in the text represent the biases from newspaper editors and journalists at the time of the publication. In particular during the period from 1940/05/10 to 1944/09/10 the Nazi occupier controlled all information published.

Other Known Limitations

The OCR transcription is not perfect. It is estimated that the quality is 95% or better.

Additional Information

size of dataset

500MB-2GB

Dataset Curators

This dataset is curated by the national library of Luxembourg (opendata at bnl.etat.lu).

Licensing Information

Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication and Certification

Citation Information

@misc{bnl_newspapers,
title={Historical Newspapers},
url={https://data.bnl.lu/data/historical-newspapers/},
author={ Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg},

Contributions

Thanks to @ymaurer for adding this dataset.