Past and Future of Newspaper

Preservation

Kevin Driedger

Library of Michigan

Michigan Newspapers

Michigan Newspaper Project

• Funded by NEH, organized by LC

• Mission to locate, catalog, and microfilm Michigan’s newspaper heritage

• Planning and cataloging at LM, filming at CMU

A locating, bibliographic, and preservation NIGHTMARE

• A few large collections, and lots and lots and lots of small collections throughout state.

• A publishing history of mergers, editions, name changes, and multitudes of inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies.

• Old newspapers – large, brittle, heavy, filthy, and microfilm’s fun too.

MNP newspaper statistics

• Located ~ 4000 newspaper titles (as defined by cataloging rules)

• 527 different communities

Top 5 counties571 - Wayne186 - Kent160 - Washtenaw143 - Oakland141 - Ingham

Bottom 5 counties5 - Lake4 - Crawford4 - Luce4 - Kalkaska3 - Alcona

17 Languages

Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Maltese, Polish, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish

Microfilming

• Board of “experts” selected titles for microfilming

• Filming done to standards!

• ~ 100 titles from 51 cities in 33 counties in 7 languages

• or 740,472 pages.

• 1 copy at CMU, 1 copy at owning library, 2 copies at LM

Products of MNP

Newspaper preservation today

• Some microfilming still happening – but few funds available

• Lot of interest in digitization – but, is it preservation, and is it economically viable (yet)?

• Do we just wait for Google to do it?

Newspaper Preservation Tomorrow

• What’s a newspaper?• Will there be any “thing” to

preserve• Can we rely on publishers to

keep an archive?• How can cultural institutions

preserve local history, without journalism / publishing around to document it?

http://blog.pressdisplay.com/2007/07/23/pressdisplay-meets-iphone-news-junkies-rejoice/

Kevin Driedger

Library of Michigan

702 W. Kalamazoo

Lansing, MI 48910

driedgerk@michigan.gov

517-373-9440