ReferencesSwitzerland
Scriptorium: the press of the canton of Vaud, page by page
Since December 2012 anyone can read the canton's press, from 1674 to this year, and search every word on every page. BCU Lausanne runs it on MediaINFO Digital Library.
about9 million
pages
online, every word searchable
BCU Lausanne, August 2026about700,000
documents
newspaper and magazine issues
BCU Lausanne, August 20268 billion
words
digitised by 2021, when the library held 7.5 million pages
La Gazette, État de Vaud, December 2021
The library
Scriptorium
In December 2012 BCU Lausanne, the cantonal and university library of Vaud, opened Scriptorium with more than a million pages of 24 heures and its ancestor, the Feuille d'Avis de Lausanne, from 1762 to 2001. The library has added about half a million pages every year since. By 2021 Scriptorium held more than 120 newspaper and magazine titles going back to 1674, and eight billion words had been digitised. Today it holds about 9 million pages.
The newspapers were scanned in Ecublens by ASSY SA, the maker of 4DigitalBooks' robotic book scanners and one of our distributors. MediaINFO Digital Library serves the pages to anyone, free, and every word on them can be searched.
From the shelf to the screen
Scanned by a partner, served by the platform.
Scanned
Scanned the newspapers in Ecublens: about 9.5 million pages for Scriptorium, by its own reference list.
4DigitalPages reference list, May 2026Served
MediaINFO Digital Library
The pages, their text and their descriptions, online for Scriptorium's readers.
Timeline
Scriptorium, year by year.
Scriptorium opens with more than a million pages of 24 heures and the Feuille d'Avis de Lausanne, 1762 to 2001. UNIL
Moves to the HTML5 version of the platform, at about 3 million pages. MediaINFO
7.5 million pages and more than 120 titles; eight billion words digitised. La Gazette, État de Vaud
About 9 million pages and 700,000 documents, growing by about 500,000 pages a year. BCU Lausanne
Written about it
In the press
- Toutes les éditions de 24heures sur internet
- Les principaux quotidiens vaudois et leurs archives seront disponibles en ligne
- Plus d'un million de pages de journaux à portée d'un clic gratuitement
- More Than 1 Million Digitized Pages of Historic Swiss Newspaper Content Now Available Online, Free
- Les canards, comment les scanne-t-on ?
- Plongée numérique gratuite dans le passé des régions vaudoises sur le site de la BCUL
- Scriptorium : l'envers du décor
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See it on your own material.
A guided demonstration on our demo server, with a few items from your collection if you wish.