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Most of the Dutch periodicals available on Delpher have been digitized with funding by Metamorfoze, the Dutch national programme for the preservation of paper heritage. Periodicals play an important part in the preservation strategy of the programme. In this TS Tools, we describe the history of Metamorfoze and its projects, consider the current course, and take a look into the future of the programme.

A measure of which newspapers are the most influential is an important foundation for any large-scale study of newspapers. A reliable measure of significance would allow studies to more strongly weigh articles in more influential papers. In this article, we use digital methods to create a partial citation index of a range of Dutch newspapers with a national circulation published in the period from 1920 to 1939. We find that using the digital archive of the National Library of the Netherlands (available through Delpher) enables us to find citations, but the problems of digitization make it impossible to create any index approaching comprehensiveness. Because source criticism – a crucial part of studying history – is made more difficult by digitization, it merits special notice in the digital age.

Digital newspaper archives are the most widely used resource for digital humanities research. The basic functionality of these archives – the ability to perform keyword searches across multiple titles – is unlikely to change. This means that researchers can safely develop a digital methodology without having to fear that new technology will make their efforts obsolete. On the basis of this observation, this article discusses three methodological problems of the digital newspaper archive. First, it provides unequal access to both different scholars and historical periods. Second, it tends to ignore the historical form of media landscapes. Third, the digital mediation of newspapers and periodicals results in a problematic loss of context. This article proposes that the solution to these problems lies in the assertion of agency over the digital newspaper archive and in the debates surrounding them by researchers. They should see digital newspaper archive as any other paper archive: with its own possibilities and limitations, which can be adjusted by the researcher.

At this moment, postmodernism has become history. This allows a fresh look at the ‘pre-postmodern’ past. Rereading Zero and other radical artists’ magazines of the early 1960s gives us the opportunity to broaden the historical scope of the magazine as an artistic medium. Having been written almost exclusively from the conceptualist perspective of the late 1960s, the history of the artists’ publication (both magazine and book) can benefit from an archaeology of the years before conceptual art. Especially at the time young DIY-oriented artists are rediscovering the potential of print, a more nuanced approach of the publications that are at the root of this practice, is of crucial importance. In this essay I will sketch a chronological topography of the crucial years between 1958 and 1963 and the use avant-garde artists made of the magazine medium. A detailed description of the neo-avant-garde artists’ magazines of this period provides the possibility to draw the network of the international Zeromovement and to situate it in a broader context.

Although the New York School of poetry is at its core a literary coterie, critics have been hesitant to consider the New York School an organized group. An exploration of Locus Solus, a literary journal edited by John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, Harry Mathews, and James Schuyler, however, reveals that the poets were most definitely concerned with presenting themselves as a joint force in American poetry. Through close reading and archival research, I untangle the poets’ instrumentalization of Locus Solus as an elaborate manifesto, exposing how the first three volumes were used to present the New York School poets and poetics, trace a poetic lineage, and put forward a succeeding generation.

In deze aflevering van TS Tools laat promovenda Yvette Linders (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) zien hoe software voor kwalitatieve data-analyse kan worden toegepast in het onderzoek naar literatuurkritiek.

According to nineteenth-century convictions, the studio reflected the soul of the artist. In the 1850s reporters started to write about visits to artists' studios. Every month, the Dutch magazine Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift published a story about a visit to the studio of an artist from the The Hague School. The aim of this article is to define what the editorial views were during the first seven years of its publication (1891-1898) on the relation between the artist and his studio. Like Emile Zola, the editors of Elsevier's believed that an artist's disposition is manifest in his work. And because the studio was supposed to reflect this disposition, they believed a description or depiction of an artist's studio would provide insight in his personality and work. Thus, an account of a visit to an artist's studio satisfied the curiosity of the public about the artist's 'true nature'. According to Elsevier's, an artist's studio embodied his personality: 'Like studio, like artist'.

Caecilia: algemeen muzikaal tijdschrift voor Nederland was the preeminent platform for Dutch musical life in the nineteenth century. Although the periodical has been a valuable source in studies on specific institutions and composer receptions, Dutch musical journalism as such still requires a more systematic investigation. This study is intended as a preliminary exploration by focusing on a set of polemics that occurred in the magazine between 1871 and 1877. First, it explores aspects of 'contested taste' in Caecilia, such as the attribution of a canonical status to 'classical' music and the formulation of a separation between serious and light music. Second, by connecting these aspects to editorial policies, critical styles and claims of authority, this article attempts to improve our understanding of the history of musical journalism and the shaping of taste in the Netherlands.

Amsterdam-based Pst Pst (1896-1898) was more than an erotic magazine. It not only tried to excite and provoke its audience with drawings of naked ladies and obscene jests, it also contained elements of two important literary trends: utopianism and naturalism. On the one hand, it was naturalistic in its attempt to uncover morals and sexual practices that were concealed in public discourse. The magazine ridiculed the double standard of Dutch society through jokes and prints about prostitution. On the other hand, it described the manifestations, mainly the nightlife, of the urban bohemian subculture to which it was - both geographically and mentally - connected. Pst Pst tried to dissociate itself from social conventions by creating a small world of its own. It announced mysterious erotic events, placed extravagant fake advertisements and depicted prostitutes as insatiable, merry young girls. Obviously, Pst Pst was not the only publication engaged in the production of erotica, but in this period it was the only erotic magazine, with corresponding characteristics such as a connection with a specific audience and an engagement with current affairs.

The railways are one of the most vivid symbols of the Nineteenth Century. Their strong symbolic meaning is, however, far from unproblematic. Representations of the railways seem to reflect both a strong confidence in 'the genius' of the Nineteenth Century, but also a strong fear of what the future will bring. The railways figure prominently in the illustrations of one of the first Dutch illustrated periodicals: De Hollandsche Illustratie (1864-1884). The two symbolic meanings of the railways can be found in the pages of this Dutch magazine. In this article I argue that the character of these representations depends largely on the specific possibilities of the medium, i.e. the illustrated periodical in a Dutch context. The limited possibilities of the Hollandsche Illustratie are the reason why most of the illustrations have a foreign origin, despite the strong development of the Dutch railways in the period and the wish of the editors to create a magazine with 'national' content. The limited possibilities also prevented a quick reaction to current affairs. I argue that the editors of De Hollandsche Illustratie tried to increase the value of illustrations they bought from other magazines by giving them a stronger symbolic meaning.

This article studies the French avant-garde magazine Documents (1929-1931), which was founded by four French intellectuals: Jean Babelon, Georges Bataille, Pierre d'Espezel and Georges Wildenstein. Soon, Bataille became the editor in chief, whereas d'Espezel and Babelon withdrew. The magazine focused on (primitive) art, philosophy and ethnography. Documents reacted to André Breton's surrealism, which Bataille and cooperatives considered too idealistic and naive. They promoted a more materialistic philosophy, called bas matérialisme. A focal point was the formlessness of reality: scientists and philosophers should not try to capture the world in rational and static texts. Documents turned against intellectualism, but did so, paradoxically, in highly intellectual texts. Thus, the magazine's form and content partly contradicted each other. On the other hand, the illustrations in the magazine correspond in interesting ways to Bataille's philosophy. It is this interaction between the form and intellectual content of the magazine that is the focus of this article.

Kleine literaire tijdschriften, zogenaamde little magazines, hebben een belangrijke rol gespeeld bij de doorbraak, in de loop van de jaren vijftig, van de Amerikaanse Beat Generation. Aangezien grotere uitgeverijen en de gevestigde tijdschriften lange tijd terugschrokken voor de zowel inhoudelijk als formeel van de norm afwijkende uitingen van de Beats, verscheen hun werk aanvankelijk vooral in kleinere tijdschriften als de twee waaraan in dit artikel aandacht wordt besteed: de Chicago Review en Big Table. Aan de hand van een beschrijving van de inhoud van deze twee tijdschriften wordt geprobeerd duidelijk te maken hoe het werk van de Beat Generation zich in deze tijdschriften gaandeweg een eigen plaats verwierf. Speciale aandacht wordt besteed aan de rol van de redacteuren Irving Rosenthal en Paul Carroll; door zijn uitgekiende strategie om voor het omstreden werk van Beat-auteur William S. Burroughs geleidelijk een steeds grotere plaats in te ruimen, bepaalde vooral Rosenthal het veranderende karakter van de Chicago Review. De veranderingen bij dat tijdschrift verliepen niet zonder slag of stoot en waren voor de eigenaar ervan, de University of Chicago, op een gegeven moment aanleiding om de Chicago Review aan censuur te onderwerpen. Ook deze censuur en de reactie erop, de oprichting van Big Table, worden in het artikel belicht.

The large-scale digitisation of early modern Dutch texts has proved to be a controversial enterprise: despite its ambitious scope, the project’s efficacy has met with widespread criticism. This article attempts to assess the methodological advantages and drawbacks of mass digitisation by combing the Dagverhaal, a late eighteenth-century periodical detailing the proceedings of the National Assembly of the Batavian Republic, for strategic invocations of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the eminent Dutch states-man who had been executed eighty years earlier.

In deze aflevering van TS Tools geeft taalhistoricus en journalist Ewoud Sanders prakti-sche tips voor het werken met gedigitaliseerde tijdschriften. Hieronder beschrijft hij hoe Nederlandstalige tijdschriften digitaal te verkrijgen zijn en hoe ze zo slim mogelijk kunnen worden doorzocht en geannoteerd.

The glossy magazine Avenue (1965-1994) is famous for its pioneering combination of words and images. The luxuriously designed magazine successfully combined lifestyle topics with art and design. Little is known about the magazine's literary supplement, Avenue Literair (1967-1990). This supplement, which reached a broad, not specifically literary public, offered a remarkable mix of national and international literature, gathered or translated by editors that enjoyed considerable prestige in the literary field. This article provides a first exploration of the content, position and editorial background of Avenue Literair.

The board members of the Dutch East India Company (1602-1795), the Heren Zeventien, promulgated various decrees in which they forbade to bring out information regarding their colonies in the Dutch East Indies and Batavia in letters, manuscripts and printed matter. But in Batavia some inventive Company servants and even staff members got around these regulations, as did some printers in Holland. They published newspapers like Bataviase Nouvelles and Vendu-Nieuws, and also the specialized journal Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap. The initiators of this journal joined hands with the Dutch world of learning and its journals. This article provides an overview of early journalism in the Dutch East Indies and thus contributes to the reconstruction of the literary and cultural climate in Batavia at the time of the VOC.

The years 1930-1931, when the famous international colonial exhibition in Vincennes was held, can be considered as the heyday of French colonialism. In these years of colonial consensus, not many newspapers dared to publish „anticolonial‟ articles. In 1930, Le Petit Parisien, the biggest and most influential newspaper of France, published a report by Louis Roubaud that was critical of the French colonisation of Indochina. This was not the only critical newspaper report of that time. On the contrary, the genre had been quite popular since the First World War. To guarantee readership, the reports had to find a balance between, on the one hand, the emotion the readers could feel reading shocking faits divers or revelations, and on the other hand the seriousness of actuality. These characteristics made it possible for critical reports to be published, even in a newspaper that was close to the political establishment. Some reports had real consequences and induced political changes. Although the genre of the „colonial reportage‟ may have roused some discussions, the colonial consensus was still so dominant that a real long-term debate on colonialism was out of the question.

This article focuses on intranational and international literary relations in Belgium between 1850 and 1950. It presents the outlines of the research project „Sire, y a-t-il des Belges?‟ (KULeuven 2006-2010) which adopts both a sociological and discursive research angle. After a presentation of the corpus material (literary periodicals) and the database interface, two case studies (La Revue de Belgique and Lumière) are highlighted, before setting out the project‟s first conclusions. Both statistic data and discursive analyses show an evolution towards the recognition of intra-Belgian literary relations at the beginning of the 20th century, replacing the so-called „compromise‟ between Francophone and Flemish literature of the 19th century, i.c. the acception of a Belgian literature in French presenting Flemish cultural elements. On a more heuristic level, a plea is made in favour of a plurilingual and intercultural literary historiography for the specific Belgian „case‟.