The digital era has profoundly altered the way news is produced and distributed, confounding traditional library strategies for ensuring the survival of this critical type of historical evidence. As mobile and web technologies become the primary channels for news distribution, and electronic databases supplant print and microfilm, the role that libraries play in supporting scholarly access to news is changing. In the digital environment, building and maintaining “collections of record” no longer ensures adequate and persistent access to news content for scholars.

On Thursday, June 27, in conjunction with the ALA Annual Meeting in Chicago, CRL held a Global Resources Roundtable, “Beyond the Fold: Access to News in the Digital Era.” The event provided an opportunity for collection development and subject specialists from CRL libraries to explore current publishing practices and new scholarly uses of news content, and to help formulate cooperative library strategies to support those uses.

Agenda

9:00–9:45 a.m.

Keynote Presentation

• Pioneers in Mining Electronic News for Research
  Kalev Leetaru, University Fellow, University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science
   

9:45–10:15 a.m.

Presentation

• Use of Traditional News Databases in Libraries: Trends and Implications
  Debora Cheney, Larry and Ellen Foster Communications Librarian, Pennsylvania State University Libraries

10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

Session 1: Print

• Legacy Collections in Major Research Libraries: Recent Developments
  James Simon, Director of International Resources, CRL
• The ICON Database of Newspapers: New Tools for Collection Management
  Amy Wood, Head, Technical Services, CRL
• Legal Deposit Considerations for the “Paper of Record” in the Post-print Era
  Bernie Reilly, President, CRL
• Discussion and Commentary: A Plausible Strategy for Digitization and Archiving of Physical Collections
   

1:15–2:30 p.m.

Session 2: Broadcast

• Comparative Analysis of Broadcast Coverage in LexisNexis, Factiva, Access World News, and Other Databases
  James Simon, CRL
• Vanderbilt Television News Archive
  Connie Dowell, Dean of Libraries, Vanderbilt University
  Jody Combs, Associate Dean of Libraries, Vanderbilt University
• UCLA’s Broadcast NewsScape
  Sharon Farb, Associate University Librarian for Collection Management and Scholarly Communication, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
  Todd Grappone, Associate University Librarian for Digital Initiatives & Information Technology, UCLA
• Discussion: Prospects for Greater Leveraging, Supporting and Exploiting of Independent Broadcast Archiving Efforts
   

2:45–4:00 p.m.

Session 3: Web

• Production and Distribution of Electronic News: Technology and Preservation Challenges
  Megan Bernal, Associate Director for Library Information & Discovery Systems, DePaul University
• The “Chronicles in Preservation” Project and Born-digital Activities at University of North Texas
  Mark Phillips, Assistant Dean for Digital Libraries, University of North Texas
• Migration of International News Content to the Web: Trends and Practices
  James Simon, CRL
• Discussion: Strategies for Comprehensive Capture of Web News
   

4:00–4:30 p.m.

Outline of a Cooperative Agenda

Background Report:

Preserving News in the Digital Environment: Mapping the Newspaper Industry in Transition
This new report maps the “lifecycle” of news content and information published in newspapers and online. It provides an overview of news workflow and production systems, suggesting strategies for libraries to preserve news in electronic formats.

Outline for an Agenda for North American Libraries based on the report from the Center for Research Libraries "Preserving News in the Digital Environment."