Swiss made BigData in action!
How Phoenix Systems and Swissdox provide essential information for students
Neither Thomas Hobbes nor Francis Bacon knew of Big Data when they wrote their famous sentence “knowledge is power” — in 2019 that power is available in the form of 25 million newspaper articles to 220'000 students in Switzerland. Thanks to the ambitious collaboration between Phoenix Systems AG and Swissdox AG, the ever-growing archive of our documented past from 280 newspapers is digitized in a continuous effort.
The Future of Information Sharing
With the “Web 2.0” users were empowered to create, share, and interact on information over the internet. Wikipedia and the likes became pillars of our information society and redefined how we think about the availability of data in general.
Newspapers are struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape, and the competition from the internet. Still, their role as “annalists” of present-time history is vital and has always been so. Students, scientists, and authors are dependant on access to these sources of knowledge.
As innovation and information sharing progress, a unified effort to make newspaper archives available is a logical consequence. Hopefully, more and more educational institutions and governmental bodies will join these initiatives to guarantee the best outcome possible. Switzerland is at the forefront of this innovation, and hopefully, we can inspire other areas of the world to start similar projects for their newspaper archives.
Read Thomas Taroni’s article on why he thinks that the effort involving ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, Universität St.Gallen — Hochschule für Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften and Kanton Aargau is so essential:
