The Impact of Digital Technology on Contemporary and Historic Newspapers

THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTNERSHIPS FOR NEWSPAPER PRESERVATION (S. 31-32)

Beth M. Robertson State Library of South Australia

Abstract

The State Library of South Australia has a substantial record of achievement under The Australian Newspaper Plan (ANPlan) (http://www.nla.gov.au/anplan/), dating from our leadership of the original National Newspaper Plan Working Group formed in 1991. We maintain in-house preservation microfilming facilities and a team of qualified staff that produces consistently excellent results to international standards. Partnerships provide the foundation of all our achievements.The proposed paper will describe these partnerships (with the National Library of Australia, local governments, public libraries, newspaper publishers and the general public) and what has been achieved through them over the last 15 years. The paper will also outline a new kind of partnership that the State Library is exploring with local newspaper publishers that could see electronic pre-press versions of hard-copy newspapers begin to play a role in newspaper preservation.

1 Introduction

Four months is a long time in the life of a library in the digital era, and between writing the abstract for this conference last October and completing the paper in February much had changed at the State Library of South Australia. The focus of the paper remains the importance of partnerships for newspaper preservation but the scope has been expanded to encompass the 45-year history of microfilming newspapers at the Library, including the legacy of microfilm produced between 1960 and 1992 before international preservation standards were adopted. The stimulus has been three-fold: 1.

In 2007 the National and State Libraries of Australasia, the peak body for State and Territory libraries, endorsed The big bang: creating the new library universe. This document calls on members to fundamentally shift their libraries into the digital world. It challenges members to accelerate their digitising efforts and to achieve mass digitisation online through collaboration and resource sharing. 2. This has coincided with my work on a digitisation plan for the State Library that will set out the priorities, strategies and goals for digitising our South Australian collections for preservation and access over the next 10 years. 3. Thirdly, over Christmas and the New Year Australia's State Libraries had the opportunity to test the prototype of the National Library's Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program website, which you have just heard about from Pam Gatenby.

These developments have highlighted the importance of reviewing the progress of our microfilming program to date: o To determine what proportion of the film produced over 45 years meets the standards required for digitising and optical character recognition. o To consider how we can maintain a balance between ongoing preservation needs and increasing access imperatives. o And to reassess the potential of partnerships for newspaper preservation in the digital world. What follows is an account of the State Library of South Australia's newspaper preservation activities to date. I trust that a wide-ranging overview of this kind so early in the program will stimulate questions and comments that can be returned to at later stages of the conference.