NTB has taken the initiative to digitize 25 million photos taken by Norwegian photographers over more than a hundred years. The parties have now signed a letter of intent and are ready to start the project.
The archives contain Norway's visual media memory. The collection is unique in Norway, probably also in Scandinavia.
- It embraces a wide range of themes: news events, daily life, sport, politics, cultural life, royalty and, not least, extensive coverage of the Second World War," explains NTB's editor-in-chief Mads Yngve Storvik.
Historically large digitization project
Aftenposten's editor-in-chief Trine Eilertsen and VG's editor-in-chief Gard Steiro also support the historic digitization project.
- Images are perhaps the strongest documentation we have of the present. At Aftenposten, we are delighted to participate in a collaboration that will make the images available to so many. This project is completely unique," says Eilertsen.
Steiro adds: "VG's archive tells the story of modern Norway. It is a treasure trove that is now being opened up to the entire population. We are grateful that the National Library of Norway is now helping to preserve the images for future generations.
100 years of visual history becomes available to everyone
National Librarian Aslak Sira Myhre is looking forward to getting started.
- Here we have over a hundred years of visual history that can benefit schools, pupils, media, authors, researchers and society in general. It's time for the collection to see the light of day again. The National Library of Norway has extensive expertise and experience in large-scale digitization. The physical material will be preserved for posterity in the National Library's facilities in Mo i Rana," he explains.
The oldest images date from the end of the 19th century, and the collection consists of glass plates, slides, negatives and paper copies until digital cameras took over in the late 1990s.
- The images belonging to the three media houses are very well cared for and stored in a 500 square meter room in Oslo. It is a living archive that is in daily use, but we are looking forward to all the images being digitized so that they can be stored safely for the future in the National Library's large storage halls. It's a record-breaking project that we expect to continue for at least six years," Storvik concludes.
About the photo collections
NTB manages the historical photo archives of NTB, Aftenposten, VG and Aktuell. Overall, it is Norway's largest photo collection with approximately 25 million photos documenting Norway's press history. The oldest photos are from the late 1800s. The collection consists of glass plates, slides, negatives and paper copies and covers the period up to the end of the 1990s - when digital cameras took over and the media began to store images digitally in the image portal NTB scanpix.
The various media have had very different approaches and journalistic approaches to their production, and the collections cover a very wide range of topics: There are news events, daily life, sports, politics, cultural life, royalty and, not least, extensive coverage of life in Norway during the Second World War.
Only a fraction of this is currently scanned and made available digitally. Even if the collection is stored relatively securely, the images will gradually degrade over time. What is critical now is that the knowledge of the archive and thus the ability to find your way around the archive is gradually disappearing. In a few years' time, the few archivists who know, work with and actively manage the collection will retire. With that, the knowledge will also be completely gone. That's why it's urgent to digitize the collections so that the unique images are available to the public and are not lost to posterity. This is our responsibility as a social actor and as a media house.
