Project Runeberg
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Project Runeberg (Template:Langx) is a digital-archive initiative for digitization of written works significant to the culture and history of the Nordic countries, with a focus on Scandinavian literature and writings.<ref name="ne">Ingemar Breithel, Ed., 2015, "Posten: Projekt Runeberg" [in Swedish; Engl., "Entry: Project Runeberg"], at Nationalencyklopedin (online encyclopedia), see [1], retrieved 22 April 2015. Template:Subscription required</ref><ref name="Boldemann03">Marcus Boldemann, 2003, ""Kultur: Ugglan" hoar gratis på nätet" [in Swedish; Engl., Culture: "'The owl' hoots for free online"], Dagens Nyheter (online), 23 April 2003, see [2]. Retrieved 22 April 2015.</ref> The Projekt Runeberg was founded by Swedish students of Linköping University, which began digitizing Nordic-language literature as early as 1991<ref name="Runeberg_beginnings"/> – The project takes its name from the Finnish national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg and is a word-play of similar-natured Project Gutenberg.
Nature
Projekt Runeberg is a digital cultural archive initiative that publishes free electronic versions of books and to digitize and archive written cultural works of literature, with a focus of Scandinavian and comparable Nordic origin with given cultural significance or historical importance.
It is patterned after the similar-named English-language cultural initiative Project Gutenberg and its similar effort, whereas the project's name is a word-play of the fact that old Nordic literature are often being written in Nordic Runes, and PG's ties to the name of German inventor Johannes Gutenberg – Inventor of the printing-press, which works eventually helped to quickly accelerate the spread of the Bible.
The initiative seeks to publishes free electronic versions of formerly digitized books and writings as Ebooks in various formats such as EPub or PDF.
History
The Runeberg-project itself was initiated by Swedish students around Lars Aronsson and other colleagues of the Lysator Academic Computer Club at the Linköping University, Sweden, which began systematically digitizing and archiving Nordic-language literature around June 1992,<ref name="Runeberg_Launch"/> while efforts started as early as July 1991,<ref name="Runeberg_beginnings">Template:Cite web</ref> when student Linus Tolke announced on the computer-club's conference-system LysKOM, to have started digitizing the Gospel of John of the Swedish Bible of 1917 (1917 års Bibelöversättning).<ref name="Bible_translation">Template:Cite web</ref>
The Project began archiving its first Nordic-language literature pieces (parts of the Fänrik Ståls Sägner, of Nordic dictionaries and of a Bible from 1917) in December 1992.<ref name="comp_Visi">Template:Cite web</ref>
As of 2015 it had accomplished digitization to provide graphical facsimiles of old works such as the Nordisk familjebok, and had accomplished, in whole or in part, the text extractions and copy-editing of these as well as esteemed Latin works and English translations from Nordic authors, sheet music and other texts of cultural interest. The project provides an extensive project-timeline with given milestones, beginning in 1991 being maintained since.<ref name="Runeberg_Timeline">Template:Cite web</ref>
Technology
By 2001, technology – image scanning and optical character recognition techniques – had improved enough to allow full digitization and text extraction of important target texts, e.g., of both print editions of the Nordisk familjebok (45,000 pages).<ref name=Boldemann03 /> Project Runeberg is hosted by an academic computer group, Lysator, at Linköping University, in Linköping in southern Sweden.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>