Press Release

(Republished with the permission of Manx National Heritage)

iMuseum, Douglas, Isle of Man

Since officially opening on 4 July this year, iMuseum has achieved its strap-line in becoming the Home of the 'Manx Memories' for users.

Explore Newspapers

Explore Newspapers is a paradigm for best practice in how to use digital innovation to revolutionise access to a rich historic archive.  Before Explore Newspapers researchers had to manually scroll through reels of microfilm hoping to find the headline or article they were interested in.  This could take several hours.  Now, twenty-seven Manx newspaper titles, from the earliest extant copy in the collection of 1792 to 1960, totalling over 400,000 pages of newsprint have been individually repaired, microfilmed, scanned and OCR'd to create an unrivalled resource for searching at the click of a button nearly two centuries worth of Isle of Man news. 

Explore Newspapers is delivered using specialist software created by Olive Software (www.olivesoftware.com).  The Olive system is capable of dissecting a scanned newspaper into its individual articles, advertisements and pictures, accounting even for articles that run over several pages.  Once dissected, each 'virtual clipping' is subject to sophisticated OCR coping with faded text, historic fonts and applying 'fuzzy logic' search technology to compensate for text inaccuracies according to error probability in each word-pattern.  In partnership with MicroFormat, who had the critical task of producing clean digital scans from the new microfilm (in line with the benchmark British Standard ISO 4087), Olive achieved more than the contracted 80% OCR success rate on all the newspapers.  Provision was also made of a digital surrogate helping secure long term preservation of the newspaper archive. 

Explore Newspapers is in every regard a sustainable product.  The software is fully-embedded within the Isle of Man Government IT network. Manx National Heritage (MNH) has access to a manual indexing tool (ActivePaper Librarian) for tagging articles; an iFrame is in place for MNH to update the homepage in-house; and there is the option to add further printed content to the system.

Since opening the iMuseum the public response to Explore Newspapers has been fantastic.  In just a few seconds people are finding articles about their ancestors and many other subjects, sometimes rediscovering long-lost family stories which create rich memories for the next generation. 

But the real proof of our achievement with Explore Newspapers is illustrated by what our users say:

"I have been researching shipwrecks since 1987. One wreck which I have known about from the start is that of a shipp's paddle wheel which is located about 4 miles east of Douglas harbour. It has always been a mystery to everyone as to how it got there.   Despite 24 years of research at both MNH and many other resources (UK National Archives, Guildhall Library, National Maritime Museum etc) I have not come across a single clue as to the origin of the paddle wheel.  Last week when I visited the iMuseum I decided to search through the newspapers to see if I could find anything. Within one minute I found an article from the Monaa's Herald describing the loss of a paddle wheel from the Isle of Man Steam Packet paddle steamer Monaa's Queen (II) in June 1889. All the facts from the article corresponded to the wreck of the paddle wheel off Douglas. Shortly afterwards I found more information relating to the incident in the Isle of Man Times. Mystery solved and job done in less than a minute! Therefore, it is a great example of the power and capability of the iMuseum.. What could take years of painstaking searching through newspapers with no guarantee of spotting the desired information can now be achieved in seconds."

Adrian Corkill

"The new Explore Newspapers feature in the iMuseum is perhaps one of the most important innovations to appear on the Isle of Man in recent years. By typing in a name or reference you're interested in, some four hundred thousand pages of Manx newsprint, dating back to the end of the 18th century, are searched within moments, giving you a list of all relevant items. Using the amazing software associated with the system you can then browse any of the pages on screen as high quality digital images. This new facility will transform research on the Island, but it also provides an easily accessible database for the general public who just want to find out more about the aspects of Manx life that interest them. The whole system is user-friendlyand has been designed and executed to an extremely high standard placing Manx National Heritage in the forefront of national museums."

Charles Guard, Manx Heritage Foundation

Manx National Heritage, Isle of Man

04/07/2011