16/03/2016

Honi Soit, the University of Sydney’s student newspaper, has been published by the Students’ Representative Council since 1929 and forms a rich and informative source of the cultural and social history of the University, New South Wales and Australia.

By Sten Christensen

There is now a need to preserve and sustain the older editions of the newspaper, which are deteriorating due to the age, and a need to provide alternative methods of access to the content. The Library has committed funds for the digitisation of a large portion of the back set (1929-1990) and has engaged the services of a company that specialises in this type of digitisation, DatacomIT.

This is the first phase of the project which involves the digitisation and scanning of the newspaper and the processing of a large number of digital files. The sum total of the data will be over a 1TB (1000 Gigabytes! This has been done onsite given the rare and fragile state of the material. Following on from the scanning and file processing we will move to phase two, discussing with the SRC on making the material that we have digitised available online to the public.

As the digital files are fully processed and checked we will be making samples available prior to the 1929 to 1990 back set going online.

Please direct any inquiries to Sten Christensen Associate Director, Publishing and Data (sten.christensen@sydney.edu.au)

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