What is BelgicaPress?
Via www.belgicapress.be, you can search millions of pages of digitised historical Belgian newspapers. The digitised images of the newspaper pages have been processed with Optical Character Recognition software (OCR) in order to produce text files of the newspaper content. Thanks to OCR, the content of all these newspapers is full-text searchable.
Open BelgicaPress
Copyright and accessibility
Content dating from before 1918 is freely accessible. You can search about 1,2 million pages from your home computer. More recent newspapers are still subject to copyright. Since Belgian law is very strict on this issue, newspapers published after 1918 can only be consulted in the following manner:
- in the reading rooms and via the KBR wifi network
- via the Belgian national research network (BELNET) for universities, colleges, schools and research centers
- by logging in to BelgicaPress with your MyKBR account (clear copyright restrictions apply).
Why do we digitise our newspapers?
Old newspapers are very fragile because they are printed on acidic wood-pulp paper, which became commonplace in the late 19th century. When exposed to air, the paper yellows and becomes brittle over time.
For some ten years now, KBR has been digitising its collections. Priority is given to vulnerable collections. More than 3,5 million newspaper pages have been digitised since 2006. By means of partnerships, a total of more than 4 million digitised documents have been produced.
