This issue of FOCUS provides various takes on a form of historical evidence of central interest to CRL and its community: the newspaper. Since CRL’s founding in 1949, we have built an immense shared collection of U.S. and foreign newspapers, now numbering over 16,000 titles. The CRL newspaper collections supplement the holdings of major national libraries like the Library of Congress and the British Library.

In this issue, Jon Giullian, Librarian for Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas, announces a collection of World War II-era Cossack newspaper titles newly available in microform from CRL. The collection documents the growing Cossack nationalist movement during a particularly volatile period in modern history. We also report on CRL’s acquisition of the major twentieth-century Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, in microform.

An update on the World Newspaper Archive describes how new titles are being digitized for this major collection of international newspapers, and the directions set by the WNA advisory committee for the further development of this collection.

Scholars and librarians wondering about the future of newspaper preservation may find useful a recent analysis of electronic news production and distribution, undertaken by CRL for the Library of Congress Office of Strategic Initiatives. The report identifies some of the challenges libraries face in ensuring scholarly access to the “first rough draft of history.”