The Cantonal & University Library of Lausanne selects Geneza’s MediaINFO to bring 250 years of the 24 Heures newspaper online. This launch is part of the Scriptorium project which aims to make available important materials (books, newspapers, magazines) that bring to life the heritage of the Canton of Vaud and the City of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Published since June 1762, 24 Heures / Feuille d’avis de Lausanne is going live powered by MediaINFO. MediaINFO will make search possible through the entire text of books, newspapers and images and view them in a friendly and interactive way.

At the launch some 1,300,000 pages of the 24 Heures / Feuille d’avis de Lausanne newspaper are going live, rising to 2,500,000 by the end of the year. In a further innovation, Scriptorium will feature PDF downloads, while from the beginning of 2013 users will be able to save selected pages and selected zones of the newspaper.

The 24 Heures newspaper has 2.5 billion words indexed, rising to 5 billion words in 2013. This large textual content is fully searchable and the hits (results) are highlighted and displayed in their original context.

Many organizations joined forces to make this project a reality. The Scriptorium project was supported by the Swiss National Library and the company Edipresse (the publisher of the 24 Heures newspaper), and with the active participation of the Vaud Cantonal Archives and the Archives of the City of Lausanne.

We are delighted that MediaINFO has been selected. This is exactly the sort of project that benefits from the flexibility and scalability of MediaINFO. We are pleased when MediaINFO is used like a bridge from the past to the future for important publications that would otherwise languish in an archive and would be only available to a limited set of viewers. We are happy to be involved in this worthwhile effort to preserve and inform the widest possible audience”. Commented Mr. Sasa Mutic, Geneza’s Chief Executive.

ABOUT LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE CANTONALE ET UNIVERSITAIRE – LAUSANNE

By the size of its collections, it is one of the largest public and academic libraries in Switzerland. It is a modern institution with a history of innovation (In 1971 it was the first library in the country to have fully computerized its catalog). Founded in the year 1537 as a teaching library and a public library since 1825. Since 2009 the BCU is the largest digital library in Switzerland with some 100,000 books digitized.

HTTP://WWW.UNIL.CH/BCU

HTTP://SCRIPTORIUM.BCU-LAUSANNE.CH