questionable

The last post seems to have gotten some heated debate started. Though good debate can be a healthy practice, and we usually live for it, it certainly wasn't the intention of the post to cause hurt feelings. What was also not intentional was to imply that NDNP alone has its finger on the pulse of good preservation or access. Clearly, that's how we were interpreted and, for that, our apologizes.

At it's most fundamental level NDNP has a single directive; to digitize and maintain in perpetuity the nation's public domain historic newspapers. It is not subject to private sector stewardship...There are no sell-offs or acquisitions, no name changes, and no outside funding sources. So, there's little extraneous influence to muddy the waters aside from global developments within the digitization community - which is welcomed and appreciated, most especially by NDNP. A perfect incubator for digital preservation of historic newspapers? Not by a long shot, but there are fewer things to run the train off track.

Mr. Huggins makes a valid point. There is indeed strength in continuity and collaboration. Perhaps, one day when standards and guidelines have been solidified, all digitization participants will make Mr. Huggin's wish a reality. Until that time, the great thing to come from all this is that people are actually reading this blog! So, we'll keep this forum going and hope Mr. Huggins and Mr/Mrs Anonymous will keep reading and posting. You are welcome to say what you think either as yourself or incognito. We welcome both. Just be nice.

Google.....again

In its continuing endeavour to digitize the world - or buy what's already been digitized as it were - Google has apparently removed some much needed and much used resources by way of PaperofRecord.com. As reported by the American Historical Association, Google bought the content of the website only to remove that content it found aesthetically inferior or out of copyright. After complaints, Google allowed PaperofRecord.com to resurface but only through academic institutions that subscribe to it. In other words, what you got for free before, you now have to go to a location where they're paying for it. "Hegemony" screams some opponents, while R.J. Huggins, founder and CEO of PaperofRecord.com, feels that Google is the only entity that can handle such an enormous task, financially speaking.

Thank Goodness for the vision of NEH and the Library of Congress to institute digital preservation standards and best practices for the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). We can only hope and pray Google is willing to digitize, maintain, and preserve its papers as properly as NDNP awardees. We're not perfect, no no, but we do have a clue about our long-term service to our constituents i.e. every American or those interested in America from any discipline.

Leading by example - that's one of the best things that libraries and archives can do.

AP and lawsuits

In February of this year, the Associated Press (AP) found itself being sued by street artist Shepard Fairey. AP was in negotiations with Fairey over the use of an AP photo that was transformed into the Obama image we've come to identify with his presidential campaign of hope. AP, having employed the photographer who's shot was the inspiration for the poster, believes they are owed credit and compensation because of copyright laws.

Now, AP has decided they're going to take on Google and other web aggregators for distributing news without compensation to AP and their member newspapers. Searches turn up newspaper articles that are online, then pair them with ads for which the aggregators are paid These ad monies do not go to the originators of said search hits but only to the aggregator.

Europe has already filed suit against Google, blocking them from distributing articles from certain newspapers. (it's unclear if they're blocked from harvesting ) Trouble is, users don't care about the finances - all they want is the information. Google leads them to X newspaper where they find the story that meets their need. What happens if they don't find what they're looking for? Does that suggest the user will troll the Internet until they find the newspaper's website? Does that mean the user will turn to the more traditional avenues of information searching - gasp- a library? What's a reasonable solution that nets the newspapers credit and money without biting the hand that feeds the user i.e. web aggregators?

another one bites the dust

Just weeks after the 150 year old Colorado mainstay Rocky Mountain News died, the 149 year old Seattle Post-Intelligencer has also folded its paper pages for the last time. It has refocused to provide web only content.

So, again I ask two questions:

1. How do we, as preservation officers of printed history, harvest and preserve web-only content and

2. How do we continue to preserve small, rural newspapers that don't have web content when microfilm services are becoming dinosaurs?

I invite you to comment no matter your position. I'm interested in what you think.

The Dissolution of Newspapers

The Rocky Mountain News has closed (see link for outstanding photo coverage). Many more major newspapers around the country are dying - bleeding to death financially. It's not that people aren't reading the news, it's just they aren't reading it from paper anymore. The internet has changed everything, including how we get our news. This change in media has far reaching implications for those of us charged with preserving "newspapers".

First, there's saving the paper copies. We already know that we can't save the paper itself - too full of acid and not enough storage space. We generally preserve the content of the paper copies with microfilm. But microfilming operations are dying as fast as the newspaper publishers. Many no longer see the need for it, what with digital being the popular media. Forget that "digital preservation" is in it's infancy. We're just as likely to lose digital data because of some silly power outage as we are likely to have rain in spring.

Then there's what to do with newspapers that are all digital. Few people have the time or expertise to figure out how to harvest and save in perpetuity this digital content because, well, digital preservation is in its infancy.

What about those papers, rural papers for instance, that fall through the cracks - they're not going under and they don't have digital content. Without microfilming directives, who's saving that content?

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this last pontification. I don't care what your position is; for or against, low-level or high-level staff, researcher, archivist, historian, or newspaper enthusiast. I just want to know what you think.

In Living Color

We've digitized most of The True American from our microfilm holdings but, recently, we were given a great gift from the Lexington Public Library. They, LPL, hold 13 original issues and were kind enough let us scan them all. With these full color issues, our run of The True American is now a short 10 issues shy of a full run. 

(First issue, June 3, 1845)

What's more, The True American will be the first full color newspaper available in the Kentuckiana Digital Library. The excitement continues!

True American

I'm so jazzed about this title that I can't contain myself anymore.

 

(pictured above: Volume 1, No. 2, scanned from master negative microfilm)

The True American [sn84024557] was Cassius Marcellus Clay's  "Emancipation" newspaper, though the masthead makes it sound much broader than that: 

"Devoted to Universal Liberty; gradual Emancipation in Kentucky; Literature; Agriculture; the Elevation of Labor, Morally and Politically; Commercial Intelligence, &c. &c."

Printed in Lexington and Cincinatti (though it always carried the Lexington dateline) from June 3, 1845 - September 21, 1846, The True American was published by William L. Neale with Cassius M. Clay as editor. But, make no mistake, Clay was leading the way. 

Clay had heard William Lloyd Garrison, founder of The American Anti-Slavery Society, speak several times while attending Yale University to become a lawyer. Garrison inspired him to do something about the "evils" of slavery, which eventually lead to the press. It put him in a somewhat precarious position, however, as his parents were large slave owning people in Madison County, KY. And, even though the issue had been proposed many times, the majority of the state had rejected abolition because they could never come to terms with compensation for the slave owners or colonization of the slaves. Needless to say, abolition was a hot topic in Kentucky.

According to Herndon J. Evans in "The Newspaper Press In Kentucky"; "Number 3, North Mill Street, was the site of the office, where Lexington was treated to its first newspaper plant armed with two brass cannons, iron barred windows, and an arsenal of Mexican lances and pikes. A trapdoor in the roof provided an escape route in case the editor and his helper found they could not hold the fort in an attack. In the basement, Clay had rigged up an "infernal machine" with a powder keg that he could set off from the outside to blow up the building and whoever was in it should the attackers succeed in taking over the plant."

While The True American falls well outside the current NDNP date range, it is a vitally important paper to the State of Kentucky and will be accessible through the Kentuckiana Digital Library soon. The University of Kentucky Libraries' Special Collections has 45 original issues of some 69 total. They were filmed, presumably in the 1980's, at an admirable reduction ratio with even lighting in the 1A position; together they make excellent digital images.

Stay tuned!