Abstract: Digital processing of historical newspapers means a lot. But there are not many related researches in China. Through the study of design and application of the newspapers digital object model of Shanghai Library, this paper discusses the key points and difficulty of the digitization of historical newspapers. This paper starts with the demand for the construction of the Chinese modern newspapers database of the Shanghai Library. Through a thorough investigation of relevant scientific researches, the paper designs a digital object model for modern newspapers literature, and formulates the structure of metadata description for the Shanghai Library’s Chinese modern newspapers database. After years’ practices in the digitalizing newspapers and deploying newspapers databases, this model is proved to satisfy the requirements for the construction of Chinese modern newspapers database. But in the future, it needs to strengthen the supportive role for big data and so on.

Key words: Literature digital object model, Newspaper, Object model design