According to Hartmut Walravens, Chair of IFLA Newspapers section, “… it is part of the concept of IFLA Newspapers Section to hold its midwinter conferences in different parts of the world to guarantee a good outreach and foster relations with colleagues in other countries … ” Hence, author K.G. Saur in The Impact of Digital Technology on Contemporary and Historic Newspapers, publishes the proceedings of The International Newspaper Conference, Singapore, 1‐3 April 2008, and papers from the IFLA World Library and Information Congress, Quebec, Canada, August, 2008. Sauer provides the reader with tracks:
Track l: Physical and digital preservation of newspapers.
Parallel Session A: Digitisation of historic newspapers: approaches and challenges.
Parallel Session B: Challenges and opportunities in digitisation projects.
Track 1: Physical and digital preservation of newspapers: the issues of legal deposit and copyright.
Track 2: Services and access models of Southwest Asian newspapers.
Track 3: Online newspapers.
Within each of the tracks are detailed addresses from international speakers representing a major library newspaper project in their country. The speeches center on historical and contemporary country specific newspapers. For example, Pam Gatenby represents the National Library of Australia and discusses “The Australian Newspaper Plan (ANPLAN)”. Dr Klaus Ceynowa discusses “Digitising Historic Newspapers in Germany: the case of Bavaria “, Ed King discusses “Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers: Utilizing the Online Database”. The lists of speakers continues from the United States, Hong Kong, Zimbabwe and more. Each country has unique and country specific perspectives and situations on their country's newspaper history and newspaper digitisation. Also included are perspectives on newspaper projects from management's perspectives.
A major focus is on preserving newspapers for their historical, present and future values for researchers, students, professors, and other users. The process involves taking the common form of newspaper microform preservation and putting it into a digitized preservation format. Common concerns arises about the graininess of the microform preservation and the microform newspaper preservation transference to a digital format. Some additional issues center on retrieval, accuracy, usefulness, ease of use of digitized newspapers and in some cases licensing.
James Simon details the importance of cooperative partnerships through exploring the efforts made by The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) and the International Coalition of Newspapers (ICON) to newspaper projects. He also looks at the support provided by the Southeast Asia Microform Project (SEAMP). As with CRL and ICON, Simon notes the purpose of SEAMP is “to preserve global newspapers and provide both bibliographic and physical access to them.” In addition to these key cooperative partners a history of cooperative partnerships exists with numerous universities, The Library of Congress, and vendors. Simon's notes “Also important is the long range planning for continuation and sustainability of such programs … ” noting “financial and technical barriers are certain to remain”.
Librarians are reminded by Nigian Lek Choh, director of The National Library of Singapore to look for innovative ways to connect to information users within the information user's e‐space. With supporting data from OCLC showing 1 percent usage of library databases by information users, the argument for connecting with information users in their e‐space is crucial and not to be ignored least Nigian Lek Choh's concern over the newspaper librarian getting to the end of the entire newspaper digitization project only to find a lack of use becomes reality.
With the previously mentioned OCLC data showing 84 percent usage of the internet and sites like Google, Yahoo, and MSN by information users; The National Library of Singapore, as Nigian Lek Choh points out, embarked on a two year project repackaging their digital content which eventually allowed Google to more easily find their library content and eventually generated increased usage of their library databases. Such ingenuity allows The National Library of Singapore to serve as a model for other libraries, proving it is possible to connect to information users. A connection newspaper librarian's management are obligated to fulfill in further endeavors of newspaper digitization.
