CRL and East View Information Services have released Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Newspapers, the second collection of titles digitized under the Global Press Archive (GPA) CRL Charter Alliance. MENA Newspapers adds to the growing collection of Open Access material available through East View's Global Press Archive® program.

With a preliminary release of over 100,000 pages from 15 titles, the MENA Newspapers collection will eventually encompass up to 500,000 pages of historical news content providing unique insights into the history of individual countries, as well as broad viewpoints on key historical events from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. In addition to Open Access content, MENA Newspapers will be complemented by five in-copyright titles from the region—al-Jumhūrīyah (الجمهورية, Egypt), Filasṭīn (فلسطين, Israel), al-Akhbar (الاخبار, Lebanon), al-Riyadh (الرياض, Saudi Arabia), and al-Dustūr (الدستور, Jordan)—available to all CRL members and those NERL members supporting the Alliance.

Content in MENA Newspapers is predominantly in Arabic, but also includes key titles in English and French, featuring titles such as Al-Iqbal (Lebanon), Al Akhaa al Watani (Iraq), Tangier Gazette (Morocco), and La Vérité (Algeria). Much of the material has never been available in digital form or available as open access material, providing the opportunity for deep consultation of unique and rarely-held publications from across the region.

MENA Newspapers is a part of the GPA/CRL Charter Alliance, a multi-year, flagship collaboration between CRL and East View Information Services to deliver nine collections comprising up to 4.5 million pages of content, including 3 million pages of public domain or “orphaned” material available as Open Access. In addition to hosting on the GPA platform, East View will provide all of the files and metadata to CRL for local hosting, with eventual support for computational analysis available on request.