The ‘morgue’: dead or alive?

It has been said that the newspaper industry in South Africa publishes about 80% of the electronic text created in our country. What happens with that? What is the value of this information to the newspaper industry as well as to the man in the street? This paper will describe the current situation and will explain how the ‘morgue’ in a newspaper company is currently used. It will also discuss the future directions that newspapers intend to follow. New technology such as text retrieval systems, CDROM technology and the Internet may change the face of the newspaper library for ever. Questions regarding the challenges that face technology in order to establish an electronic newspaper archive, the information requirements of journalists and how they use online information will also be discussed. New developments in technology that may in the future give us an electronic newspaper personalised according to our specific information needs will also be discussed.