This story is part of the series from the Transition Accelerator 2024 cohort.
Today, we’re shining a light on Oslobođenje, one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s most iconic independent media outlets, with a history spanning over 80 years. During the Transition Accelerator, the team has been working on digitizing that legacy and creating a monetizable archive platform for public use.
We sat down with Saša Naprta, Director of Digital Operations, and Nihad Katica, Head of Digital Platform, to talk about the hands-on work of digging through archival treasures and their bold vision to make this history accessible.
Digitizing 81 years of legacy
“Walking into the locked, dusty basement without electricity where our archive material is currently stored, holding these records in our hands – some of them twice our age – was an emotional experience for our team,” reflects the Oslobođenje team.
Founded in 1943, Oslobođenje is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s most respected and enduring media outlets. Successfully transitioning to a digital-first approach, their mission is to provide independent journalism that informs, educates, and connects their audience.
The team set out to sift through a monumental amount of history: 30.000 archived print newspaper editions and entire basements full of unique photographs in microfilm, negative and hard print were waiting to be unearthed and digitized.
“In the beginning, it seemed impossible to jump into such a huge process, but the Transition Accelerator gave us the boost we needed to start this project”, recalls Saša Naprta, Director of Digital Operations at Oslobođenje. Collaborating with a tech partner specializing in Optical Character Recognition (OCR), over the past 8 months, Oslobođenje has now digitized one-third of their print newspaper archive into machine-readable format.
User-centric design: Balancing simplicity and richness
Besides the sheer volume of records, a significant challenge was how to turn the digitized information into a user-friendly platform. “Usually, everything works fine in offline mode – but creating a product that will actually reach people in real life is very tricky. In building this archive, we were trying to think of how to respect the time that our users give us”, says Nihad Katica, Head of Digital Platform at Oslobođenje.
Drawing on insights from a UX/UI redesign of their main website, and with the guidance of IPI’s coaches, Oslobođenje implemented numerous A/B tests to develop an intuitive product. Nailing the right features has helped them attract both existing and new users.
Simplicity turned out to be key: From the new archive homepage, users can easily navigate the archive via a search bar or explore newspaper issues organized by year and month. An engaging “surprise-me” feature recommends interesting archive content based on user data. Leveraging Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, all text within the newspaper scans can be readily copied for further use.
To seamlessly connect the archive to Oslobođenje’s news product, archive users will be prompted to view news highlights from the main website, while news readers will be encouraged to explore the rich historical content of the archive.
Homepage of 80godina.ba
Paving the way for phase two
Leveraging momentum from the first stage of the project, Oslobođenje is setting their sights on the next demanding task of digitizing their extensive picture archive. One of the approaches is to set up volunteer groups with archiving and librarianship students, who can help categorize and caption the archival photographs. Inspired by subscription and monetization schemes adopted among the Accelerator cohort, the team is exploring monetizing their picture archive with a tiered photo agency service.
To provide their archive content to the public free of charge and without programmatic ads, the team is creating partnerships with local communities and institutions to secure long-term funding support.
“We truly believe that this project holds immense value for our community, our country, and neighboring nations, and we are looking forward to building it out further.”
The Transition Accelerator is part of the Media Innovation Europe programme (MIE), made possible with the support of the European Union.
