News Preservation Summit

More than 160 U. S. Newspapers have either quit business or stopped publishing a print edition during the past three years.  How can we make sure that a community’s history and cultural record does not cease to exist?  How can we make sure that digital news products currently being created by online news organizations are preserved and accessible for citizens and scholars in the twenty-second century?
On April 10-12, 2011, a diverse group of stakeholders will meet here at the Reynolds Journalism Institute (University of Missouri, Columbia) to have a conversation about preserving news content.  We’re calling it the Newspaper Archive Summit:  Rescuing orphaned and digital content.
Conference website: http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/newpaper-archive/index.php.
Registration is free.
Preserving newspaper collections involves many disciplines. If you’re among any of the following, we hope you’ll join us in this important conversation:

  • Stewardship organizations  (libraries, museums, digital archives)
  • Print and Online News content publishers and organizations
  • Experts in news copyright
  • Academic and community scholars who depend on news content for their research
  • Genealogy community
  • Commercial vendors and content aggregators

Panel discussions on Day 1 will include:

  • How it is in the public interest to preserve and provide access to news content.
  • Copyright and third party vendor issues
  • The need for preservation and access of this content from the perspectives of scholars and genealogists
  • The needs and concerns of news content creators and publishers
  • Successful commercial and non-commercial digitization projects.

Day 2 will bring together diverse groups in developing a plan for creating partnerships and incentives to preserve and provide access to analog and digital news content.
Among the significant recommendations of the  Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access (http://brtf.sdsc.edu/) is the creation of public/private partnerships and to define incentives for commercial entities to hand off public interest content to stewardship organizations for preservation. This conference is an important first step in those goals. We will look forward to seeing you in Columbia  in April.
Contact
Dorothy Carner
carnerd@missouri.edu
Adjunct Professor, Missouri School of Journalism
Head, Journalism Libraries
University of Missouri-Columbia
102 Reynolds Journalism Institute
Columbia, MO 65211
Phone: 573-882-6591
Fax: 573-884-4963
Web:  http://mulibraries.missouri.edu/journalism