The Historical Newspaper Crisis: Discoverability, Access, Preservation, and the Future of the News Record

Abstract

This paper discusses, investigates, and theorizes on three themes related to the use of newspapers as primary sources: discoverability, access, and preservation. Evidence includes: the evolution of discovery from union lists and indexes to keyword searching; access overtime of various formats including New York Times microformat and digital holdings in academic Association of Research Libraries (ARL); preservation challenges of multiple formats in the past and future. The authors, academic librarians in the United States, offer insight about how these three themes should be considered in collection development, reference and instruction, and acquisition activities in academic libraries. Finally, the paper will speculate on future challenges librarians and scholars may face discovering and using news sources in light of the shrinking number of newspapers, the lack of a version of record for those existing papers, and the growth of alternative and fleeting news sources.