Abraham Catalogue of Belgian Newspapers


The Abraham Catalogue of Belgian Newspapers is an online database of historical Belgian newspapers from 1830 to 1950 that are preserved in libraries and other heritage institutions across Flanders and Brussels.

Contents

Abraham catalogues the location and ownership of Belgian national, regional, and local newspapers kept in more than one hundred libraries and heritage institutions. So far, the number of inventoried newspaper titles from the period 1830-1950 already exceeds 7200.
The database shows the most important specifications of each newspaper, such as title, date, and place of publication. Keywords indicate the type of newspaper or the social community at which the newspaper was aimed. Seeing that newspapers were often attached to a certain city or region, the database allows searching on geographical terms.
Users are able to see detailed information on the exact editions and locations of each newspaper, including the format in which it is preserved in each of the institutions. Links are added for newspapers that are consultable online. It is not possible to search on content of any newspaper article.

Name

The database was named after Abraham Verhoeven, who is considered to be the first publisher of newspapers in the Southern Netherlands. His Nieuwe Tijdinghen was a substantial contribution to the early beginnings of a daily form of newspaper.

The Abraham database: development and continuation

Abraham was developed as a project in 2007 by the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library in co-operation with a large number of heritage institutions. The catalogue was created to increase general access to historical newspapers, a goldmine of cultural-historical information. Frequent consultation of these newspapers, however, poses considerable risks, seeing that especially those from 1830 to 1950 are often printed on fragile and low-quality paper. The only way to preserve their contents for posterity will be by copying them to microform or digital format. In this way, Abraham plays an important role in the preservation of these vulnerable documents.
At the end of 2008, the project was taken over by the then newly founded Flanders Heritage Library. Together with various partners from the heritage field, Flanders Heritage Library is further actively updating and enriching the database with new records. In the meantime, Abraham is being used as a helpful tool for digitising projects.