The cultural-historical value of and problems with digitized advertisements: Historical newspapers and the portable radio, 1950- 1969

Abstract

This article demonstrates how a digital newspaper archive such as Delpher offers new possibilities to do justice to the value of newspaper advertisements when conducting historical research. A case study into the way advertisements tried to cater to youngsters in portable radio advertisements (1950-1969) will illuminate how distant, semi-distant, and close reading can further historical enquiry. This case study, at the same time, reveals a major shortcoming of these digitized advertisements, namely the way they are currently indexed – classified advertisements in particular. The article offers two computational approaches that will result in a more fine-grained indexation, and urges the National Library of the Netherlands to experiment with these approaches as well as with crowd sourcing. Only after these measures have been taken will researchers be able to use the full potential of advertisements on Delpher’s newspapers.