Presenting photos of historic significance since the Meiji Era : The Asahi Shimbun Photo Archives

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  • デジタル時代の映像（写真・動画）アーカイブ：朝日新聞フォトアーカイブ
  • デジタル ジダイ ノ エイゾウ(シャシン ・ ドウガ)アーカイブ : アサヒ シンブン フォトアーカイブ

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Abstract

The Asahi Shimbun Photo Archives was established in 2010 to digitize some 20 million photos of historic significance that The Asahi Shimbun has retained in the form of prints, negatives and glass plates since the Meiji Era (1868-1912). Along with recent photos taken by digital cameras, a total of 2.4 million images have already been made available to the public on its website. Digitization requires time-consuming and labor-intensive effort to prepare metadata for images―including titles, captions, dates and places―with the help of memos on the back of prints and other clues. Such data, together with related keywords, help archive users find the images they want. Thanks to a major upgrading of the archive in 2014, curated images are now more easily searchable with such new functions as a sophisticated search system with more options, as well as the presentation of many images under specific themes. Images on the website have been extensively utilized as materials for school textbooks, TV programs, books, magazines, governmental documents and others. Videos are becoming an increasingly important area for our work with those shot by Asahi Shimbun reporters as part of daily coverage now available on the Internet. Dealing with photos whose copyrights have expired is emerging as a new challenge for the archive. The Asahi Shimbun Photo Archives is ready to make the best use of old photos that would otherwise be lost to posterity by publicizing them as much as possible and offering a reasonable fee system. We have prepared the terms of use for that purpose. One of the most crucial roles of a leading Japanese newspaper is to preserve and present the important photos that capture vivid memories of modern history.

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