What's in our corpus?

On the occasion of the first public release of the Impresso interface, we wish to take stock of our newspaper corpus. More than a year has passed since the last corpus update and a lot has happened in Impresso ever since!

Impresso in numbers

So far our data acquisition strategy has been focussing on Swiss and Luxembourgish newspapers and, as of January 2020, the Impresso corpus consists of 76 newspapers (50 Swiss and 26 Luxembourgish), whose material breaks down as follow:

• number of newspaper issues: 604,769
• number of pages: 5,445,822
• number of words: 12,508,779,241
• number of images: 3,467,640
• number of content items: 47,876,994

A word about terminology: content item is the term we use to refer to newspaper contents below the page level. Typically, pages image are segmented and classified into finer-grained content units such as articles, advertisements, images, tables, weather forecasts, obituaries, etc. – this is precisely what is referred to by content items. This segmentation process is also known as document layout analysis.

Impresso newspaper digitized materials were provided by our associated partners, namely: the Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg, the Swiss National Library, the Valais Media Library and State Archives, and the newspapers Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Le Temps (Ringier group). Further Swiss institutions also participates to Impresso endeavour with their sources, that is to say: the newspapers La Liberté, Freiburger Nachrichten, L’Essor, Le Confédéré, Bote vom Untersee, the group ArcInfo in collaboration of the Bibliothèque de la Chaux-de-Fonds, the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Fribourg, and the Swiss Social Archives in collaboration with UNIA. Physical acquisition of the material would not have been possible without the contribution of RERO, the Library Network of Western Switzerland. We take the opportunity here to thank all these partners for their support and contributions.

Open data in Impresso

While in Impresso we strive for open data, Impresso titles are subject to different right statement regimens depending on their copyright situations.

Some contents are freely available for personal and academic use (‘Personal and Academic use’), while others are no longer in copyright and may be used without restrictions (‘Public’). The former are the contents to which Impresso users are granted access upon acceptance and signature of the Terms of Use, while the latter are visible and usable without restriction not the need for login (to know more about how to get access visit the Impresso interface or drop us a line at info[at]impresso-project[dot]ch).

At the time of writing, the public subset of our corpus amounts to:

• 79,746 newspaper issues (~15% of the total)
• ~6 million pages
• 32,964 images (~10% of the total)
• half a billion tokens of text (n=572,030,104).

The two plots below show the distribution of newspaper issues over time (plot 1: 1738-1900; plot 2: 1900-2018), distinguishing the two conditions of use. It appears clearly that the period 1831-1877 is the richest in terms of publicly available contents.

Download plot 1

Download plot 2

What’s coming next?

Our corpus is continously evolving and growing, and here come the main perspectives.

On the short term, two titles (Schweizer Arbeitgeber and the Schweizerische Handels-Zeitung) from our partner the Swiss Economic Archives (SWA), as well as the Bundesblatt (Federal Gazette), will soon be ingested. The Bundesblatt is a weekly publication of the Swiss Government in French, German and Italian which includes various official documents. Digital material is available from 1848 on in German and French, and from 1971 on for Italian. Periodical publications originating from different bodies (the government in the case of Bundesblatt, and unions in the case of SWA titles) will allow for comparative analyses of discourses.

On the long term, we aim at expanding the Impresso corpus beyond the Swiss and Luxembourgish borders. To this end, we are actively collaborating with further national libraries and partners and, depending on time resources, more material in English and French will join the Impresso corpus.

Corpus statistics

The table below lists aggregate statistics about the corpus at the level of newspaper title. If you want to further explore these contents, simply head to the Newspapers section of the Impresso interface and start browsing.

newspaper id	newspaper title	start year	end year	n. issues	n. pages	n. tokens	n. images
actionfem	L’Action féminine	1927	1940	101	1900	834001	75
armeteufel	Arme Teufel	1903	1929	916	3678	6072816	411
avenirgdl	L’avenir	1868	1871	995	3927	13103088	4
BDC	Bulletin des séances de la Constituante	1839	1839	23	96	57942	1
BLB	Bündner Landbote	1846	1847	110	430	530239	0
BNN	Bündner Nachrichten	1885	1892	1906	7674	15463632	0
buergerbeamten	Bürger- und Beamten-Zeitung	1898	1916	3008	13390	27445272	163
CDV	Courrier du Valais	1843	1857	1200	4880	7660997	161
CON	La Contrée	1902	1903	101	404	516013	303
courriergdl	Courrier du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg	1844	1868	4367	18037	41672201	2
deletz1893	De Letzeburger	1893	1909	887	3634	3926531	1261
demitock	De Mitock e Wocheblad fir Jux an Zodi	1937	1940	134	536	799744	1258
DFS	Wochenblatt für die vier löblichen Kantone Ury, Schwytz, Unterwalden und Zug	1814	1849	1825	7687	10531868	6
diekwochen	Diekircher Wochenblatt	1841	1848	444	1868	2058403	638
DLE	Der Landbote des freiburgischen Seebezirks	1909	1914	402	1657	2781257	5347
DTT	Die Tat	1935	1978	12970	218285	541602394	57979
dunioun	D’Unio’n	1944	1948	891	4532	11720093	2520
DVF	Der Volksfreund	1879	1885	876	3518	4796603	0
EDA	L’Écho des Alpes	1839	1844	544	2225	2445174	51
EXP	L’Express	1738	2018	46472	703111	1548614911	1041396
EZR	Der Erzähler	1806	1865	3555	18040	23734243	27
FCT	La FCTA	1955	1963	428	1724	2234291	0
FZG	Freiburger Nachrichten	1865	2018	33692	364417	821100096	55624
GAV	Gazette du Valais / Nouvelle gazette du Valais	1855	1922	4728	19573	42559916	511
GAZ	Gazette du Simplon	1842	1847	390	1615	3562505	55
gazgrdlux	Gazette du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg	1878	1878	141	574	1352589	3
GDL	Gazette de Lausanne	1804	1991	51062	441517	1105119085	227873
HRV	Der helvetische Volksfreund	1799	1801	152	2227	1160909	3
IMP	L’Impartial	1881	2018	41749	775756	1383163181	1041538
indeplux	L’indépendance luxembourgeoise	1871	1934	18654	72896	203233645	8472
JDF	Journal du canton de Fribourg	1830	1833	319	1274	1382340	58
JDG	Journal de Genève	1826	1998	49180	495926	1423762761	211602
JDV	Le Journal du Valais	1848	1848	92	373	527437	0
kommmit	Komm mit mir!	1884	1884	22	192	50100	162
LAB	Der Liberale Alpenbote	1848	1860	2257	9126	11987230	0
landwortbild	Luxemburger Land in Wort und Bild	1895	1895	39	314	214810	156
LBP	Le Bien public	1879	1888	1440	5791	13009090	19082
LCE	Confédéré	1861	2018	16599	95897	185284905	164011
LCG	Le Confédéré de Fribourg	1848	1907	8185	33140	61433122	4891
LCR	Le Chroniqueur	1854	1881	4561	18310	36415330	1884
LCS	Le Courrier fribourgeois	1830	1830	107	426	434399	1
LES	L’Essor	1906	2018	2120	10611	16813285	9783
LLE	La Liberté	1871	2018	42548	749944	1673145718	196218
LLS	La lutte syndicale	1906	1998	4524	25662	60856831	0
LNF	Le Narrateur fribourgeois	1840	1855	977	3892	4850926	32
LSE	Le Peuple, La Sentinelle	1890	1971	20183	131832	318513171	732
LSR	L’Observateur	1846	1848	71	305	446839	0
LTF	La Tribune de Fribourg	1905	1905	217	870	3255362	338
lunion	L’Union	1860	1871	3144	12596	31052870	3
luxembourg1935	Luxembourg (1935)	1935	1940	1540	8892	22405437	9779
luxland	d’Letzeburger Land	1954	2007	2772	49062	73389858	58684
luxwort	Luxemburger Wort	1848	1950	30372	161219	359981930	19692
luxzeit1844	Luxemburger Zeitung	1844	1845	215	872	1265515	0
luxzeit1858	Luxemburger Zeitung - Journal de Luxembourg	1858	1859	538	2216	4119984	536
LVE	Le Véridique	1831	1833	312	1320	1820362	50
MGS	Der Morgenstern	1842	1843	210	860	1099996	0
NTS	Neues Tagblatt aus der östlichen Schweiz	1856	1874	4356	17786	29930243	200
NZG	Neue Zuger Zeitung (II)	1846	1891	3604	14901	27699105	542
NZZ	Neue Zürcher Zeitung	1780	1950	112672	561444	1766374181	0
obermosel	Obermosel-Zeitung	1881	1948	12563	64212	170730444	44299
OIZ	Die Gewerkschaft	1901	1992	3494	18601	37740386	0
onsjongen	Ons Jongen	1944	1951	139	2060	2002679	5515
SAX	Journal de Saxon	1882	1884	1	4	4861	0
schmiede	Schmiede	1916	1919	159	652	812278	96
SDT	Solidarité	1909	2001	2805	15926	38413656	0
SGZ	St.Galler Zeitung	1831	1881	11168	46042	78456303	25
SMZ	SMUV-Zeitung	1902	2004	4799	45662	82009685	0
SRT	Schweizerische Tag-Blätter	1798	1798	30	265	111854	0
tageblatt	Escher Tageblatt	1913	1950	11338	79163	48072604	263285
VDR	La Voix du Rhône	1844	1844	1	4	7240	0
VHT	VHTL-Zeitung	1904	2004	3139	19754	37749239	0
volkfreu1869	Volksfreund	1890	1939	1087	4212	8062600	30
waechtersauer	Der Wächter an der Sauer	1849	1869	2199	8796	14624140	8
waeschfra	D’Wäschfra	1868	1884	660	2658	2189278	5366
WHD	Der Wahrheitsfreund	1835	1863	1283	6257	10290086	56
ZBT	Der Zugerbieter	1865	1868	155	527	704594	1

Here you can download the CSV data that were used to produce the table above.