Internet resources: Century-long “Pravda” archive goes digital

On February 1 2011 journalists were shown a portal that provides access to all digitized issues of the most famous Soviet newspaper “Pravda” (“Truth”) that is celebrating its 100th anniversary next year.

“Pravda. Complete digital archive” database features more than 150 000 newspaper pages published between 1912 and 2009. “Pravda” digital archive is now available online. The database is accessible to university scientific and public libraries, as well as state and commercial organizations.

Robert E. Lee, Online Publishing Director of EAST View Information Services (EVIS), is one those who initiated the newspaper’s electronic archive project.

Digitization of “Pravda” archive involved state-of-the-art technology which enabled to convert all graphic images stored on microfilms into digital format. In some cases, especially when dealing with recent years issues, were used available electronic counterparts. Along with graphic images of newspaper pages available in PDF format, electronic version enables to view issues and launch search by keyword.

Yuri Snopov, spokesman of “IVIS” company – exclusive distributor of “Pravda” database in Russia and CIS countries, told that the organization had been collecting “Pravda” issues, which were then converted into electronic format.

“All issues, all articles covering the whole history of the newspaper have been digitized. We’ve done our best to offer an easy and convenient work with an archive”, he said.

Mr Snopov added that archive’s interface supports several languages: Russian, English, German and Chinese. He also stressed that there were mainly representatives of foreign countries among the archive’s database current subscribers. He is convinced that in the West and Asian countries there are more “Pravda” subscribers than in Russia.

April 2012 will see the centenary of “Pravda” newspaper’s first issue. Before the Revolution the edition came out under various titles: “Rabochaya pravda” (“Working truth”), “Severnaya pravda” (“Northern truth”), “Put’ pravdy” (“The way of truth”), “Rabochiy” (“Worker”) etc.