The Abraham Catalogue of Belgian Newspapers is an online

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...

of historical Belgian

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...

s that are preserved in

libraries A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...

and other

heritage Heritage may refer to: History and society * A heritage asset is a preexisting thing of value today ** Cultural heritage is created by humans ** Natural heritage is not * Heritage language Biology * Heredity, biological inheritance of physica ...

institutions across

Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to cultu ...

and

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Abraham catalogues the location and ownership of

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

national, regional, and local newspapers kept in more than one hundred libraries and heritage institutions. So far, over 11,000 newspaper titles published after 1800 are inventoried in the catalogue. The database shows the most important specifications of each newspaper, such as title, date, and place of

publication To publish is to make content available to the general public.Berne Conve ...

. Keywords indicate the type of newspaper (with a focus on e.g. trade, sports, or advertising) or the social community at which the newspaper was aimed (e.g. catholic, liberal, or socialist community). Seeing that newspapers were often attached to a certain city or region, the database allows searching on geographical terms. Users are able to see detailed information on the exact editions and locations of each newspaper, including the format (paper,

microform Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. ...

, or digital format) in which it is preserved in each of the institutions. Links are added for newspapers that are consultable online. It is not possible to search on content of any newspaper article.

Name

The database was named after

Abraham Verhoeven Abraham Verhoeven (1575–1652) was the publisher of the first newspaper of the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium). In 1605 he got his license to print news of military victories in woodblock or copperplate. Thereafter he produced not only prints ...

( Antwerp, 1575–1652), who is considered to be the first publisher of newspapers in the

Southern Netherlands The Southern Netherlands, also called the Catholic Netherlands, were the parts of the Low Countries belonging to the Holy Roman Empire which were at first largely controlled by Habsburg Spain (Spanish Netherlands, 1556–1714) and later by the A ...

. His ''

Nieuwe Tijdinghen ''Nieuwe Tijdinghen'' (in English also known as the ''Antwerp Gazette'') is the contemporary name cataloguers and bibliographers have given to the first Flemish newspaper, which was published without a single fixed title. News was printed from acr ...

'' (New Tidings) was a substantial contribution to the early beginnings of a daily form of newspaper.

The Abraham database: development and continuation

Abraham was developed as a project in 2007 by the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library in cooperation with a large number of heritage institutions. The catalogue was created to increase access to historical newspapers, a goldmine of cultural-historical information. The catalogue is also used as a helpful tool for digitising projects. In this way, Abraham plays an important role in the preservation of these vulnerable documents. Frequent consultation of the newspapers poses considerable risks, especially for those published from 1830 to 1950, which were often printed on fragile and low-quality paper. The only way to preserve their contents for posterity is to copy them to microform or digital format. At the end of 2008, the project was taken over by the then newly founded Flanders Heritage Library. Together with various partners from the heritage field, the Flanders Heritage Library is further actively updating and enriching the database with new records.

References

External links

Online databaseBackground information
(only available in Dutch) {{Authority control Libraries in Belgium Library cataloging and classification Documents Newspapers published in Belgium Archives in Belgium

Contents

Name

The Abraham database: development and continuation

See also

References

External links