Over 1 million Spanish newspaper pages labeled as public domain

Yesterday Europeana, the online portal to Europe’s digital cultural heritage, announced the great news that over 1 million historical Spanish newspaper pages have been labelled as public domain. These newspapers were digitised and made available as part of the Virtual Library of Historical Newspapers project, and were added to Europeana by Hispana, a service which brings together the digital collections of Spanish GLAMs and delivers these to Europeana.

Since this material originates from as far back as the late 18th century and was digitised with public funding, it is clear that it belongs in the public domain. This type of open availability greatly enhances the possibilities to access and re-use the material. To see the newspapers in the Europeana portal, click here.

Europeana is currently dedicating further efforts to improving the quality and presence of rights statements of digital objects included in their portal. They aim to have a valid rights statement for all objects in July 2014 – more details on this process are available here.
We look forward to welcoming more material into the public domain in the near future!