Timarit.is (also known as Tímarit.is, Tidarrit.fo and Aviisitoqqat.gl) is an

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

run by the

National and University Library of Iceland ( Icelandic: ; English: ''The National and University Library of Iceland'') is the national library of Iceland which also functions as the university library of the University of Iceland. The library was established on 1 December 1994 in Reykjav ...

which hosts digital editions of newspapers and magazines published in

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

Faroe Islands The Faroe Islands ( ) (alt. the Faroes) are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and an autonomous territory of the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. Located between Iceland, Norway, and the United Kingdom, the islands have a populat ...

and

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

as well as publications in their languages elsewhere, such as

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

which had a large influx of Icelanders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The project was initially sponsored by the

West Nordic Council The West Nordic Council (, , , ) is a cooperative forum for the parliaments and governments of Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland. It was initially founded in 1985 as the West Nordic Parliamentarian Council of Cooperation but the name was ch ...

and launched its web interface under the title VESTNORD in 2002. The web interface has since undergone two major revisions, in 2003 and 2008. With the last revision a decision was made to gradually convert images from the DjVu image format to the more common

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

. Hence, part of the collection can be viewed with the DjVu plugin and part with a PDF reader. The digital collection covers material from the 17th century to the early 21st century and offers users the ability to collect

bookmark A bookmark is a thin marking tool, commonly made of card, leather, or fabric, used to keep track of a reader's progress in a book and allow the reader to easily return to where the previous reading session ended. Alternate materials for book ...

s on their free account for ease of use as well as do a text search on the majority of the collection. As of February 2009 there were more than 2.6 million images in the archive of which 2 million had been OCRed. Initially the aim was to limit access to newspapers published before 1930 to avoid questions of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

but shortly afterwards the project made an agreement with

Morgunblaðið ''Morgunblaðið'' (, ''The Morning Paper'') is an Icelandic daily newspaper. ''Morgunblaðið''s website, mbl.is, is the most popular website in Iceland. It is currently the country's only daily printed newspaper and the newspaper of record. Hi ...

to scan and publish issues which are three years old. This agreement was followed with others involving both current and defunct newspapers published in the 20th century. Newspapers published after 2000 are usually sent to the library in digital format. The general rule, depending on agreements with each publisher, is to make these available 2–3 years after their initial publication.

References

External links

Timarit.is
{{DEFAULTSORT:Timarit.Is Open-access archives Icelandic digital libraries Online databases Internet properties established in 2002 Libraries established in 2002