Press Release
Olive Software Brings Australia’s First Digital Archive Online
One Million Page Archive Is Exact Replica of the Country's Longest-Running Newspapers
Santa Clara, California, APRIL 23, 2007 – In a move that brings researchers out of musty stacks and into the comfort of their own offices and homes, Fairfax Media, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun Herald, has selected Olive Software to provide the platform for a digital archive of 35 years of issues, from 1955-1990. Fairfax will use Olive’s ActivePaper Archive to transform existing text and microfilm archives into a single XML-based format that makes the content available over the Web to anyone, anywhere. Previously, the archive was only available to those prepared to diligently scan through reams of microfilm.
In May, 2006, Fairfax Media initially announced they would work with Smedia, a distributor of Olive Software in Australia, to digitize issues from 1955-1990. “As soon as these archives were available, the overwhelmingly positive response from our customers and their requests for even more current material led to plans to add 1991-2001 to the issues available in Olive format,” said Dean Leith, Information Services Manager at Fairfax Media.
The archive is an exact digital replica of the newspapers. All articles, photos, and advertisements are searchable by keyword and the results are returned in an exact digital reproduction of the pages as they were originally published. Customers from researchers to university students to interested readers have begun accessing the archives.
“As the newspaper industry shifts in the U.S. and around the globe, publishers are looking for new ways to not only manage their content, but capitalize on the real value of their content within the marketplace. Olive is pleased to help Fairfax Media open their archives to the public, as well as open up a new revenue stream for the company,” said Yuval Rachmilevitz, President and CEO of Olive Software.
Publishing Across the Globe
As the newspaper business becomes increasingly global, Olive Software
has digitized archives – as well as created electronic editions
of papers – for customers on every continent except Antarctica.
Papers such as the Irish Times, The Scotsman, Denver Newspaper Agency,
the Times of India and SingTao Publishing Group rely on Olive Software
to power their information, making it accessible to wide audiences ranging
from corporate users to web readers to students.
“Technology continues to accelerate and enhance the capacity to deliver news and information to readers where and when they want – and without a huge capital investment on the part of news organizations. Forward thinking publishers are not viewing themselves solely as providers of newspapers, but rather as providers of information in all its myriad forms. Olive Software is helping companies easily and cost-effectively make the most of their content,” said Rachmilevitz.
“This archive technology is a first in Australia and allows us to join other major international publications such as The Los Angeles Times and The Scotsman in digitizing their archives,” said Dean Leith, of Fairfax Media.
The Sydney Morning Herald is bringing nearly 1,000,000 pages of archives online. A variety of subscriptions are available for private individuals, as well as companies, institutions, government and libraries. You can visit the archive at http://archives.smh.com.au
About Fairfax Media
Fairfax Media is the leading newspaper publisher in Australia. The company
incorporates long-standing metropolitan daily newspapers like the Sydney
Morning Herald in its 175th year and The Age (Melbourne) in its 151st
year; a national financial daily, The Australian Financial Review and
a number of related financial and lifestyle magazines and related websites
and products. Fairfax also owns a number of metropolitan dailies and websites
in New Zealand and a number of regional and community newspapers in both
New Zealand and Australia.
About Olive Software
Olive Software (www.olivesoftware.com) transforms unstructured content
into intelligent knowledge assets, enabling information discovery, effective
search and future-proof preservation. Hundreds of companies rely on Olive
to unlock the information in their content and publish it through a browser,
customized web application or portal, or knowledge management application.
Olive’s end-to-end electronic publishing platform understands the
structure and semantics of electronic, paper, microfilm, and microfiche
documents and automatically converts them to XML with highly searchable
metadata. Olive Software is based in Santa Clara, California, with sales
offices in New York, Washington DC, Denver, and Los Angeles, and R&D
facilities in Israel.
Media Contacts:
Fairfax Media
Jane Brimacombe
+61 2 9282 2910
jbrimacombe@fairfax.com.au
Sasha Frey
Marketing Director
+1 720.747.1220
sashaf@olivesoftware.com
www.olivesoftware.com