Newspaper Digital Libraries News-Clipping Services and Long Term Archiving Using Greenstone

Abstract

The importance of newspapers for people of all walks of life, institutions, government and countries in general, need not be overemphasized. It is truly a reflection and narrative of a society, status and its culture. Researchers too turn to newspapers for casual as well as quality research. It is interesting to note the continued relevance of the newspapers in the traditional paper format even when the publishing and transmission of news as well as newspapers across the world have migrated to newer paradigms and platforms such as the Web, Blogs, PDAs, Mobiles, eReaders etc. At the same time, newspaper management in libraries pose plethora of problems to librarians. Requirement of vast space, large size racks, extraordinary weight of bound volumes coupled with the damage that the paper undergoes over time are just a few to mention them. Recent developments in technology, especially the digital technologies, have a lot to offer in efficiently combating the above problems. The current information environment prompts libraries to leverage on the latest digital technologies towards building newspaper digital libraries and in setting up dynamic newspaper access and retrieval systems. These newer breeds of information services offer lots of power and visibility to newspapers, especially the old collections. This paper highlights the power of Greenstone software in developing newspaper digital libraries. It also reports the success stories of two large scale newspaper digital libraries - the Papers Past newspaper digital library, a collection of 19th and 20th century newspapers from the National Library of New Zealand and the Singapore National Library. The experience of the Center for Development of Digital Libraries (CDDL) of IIM Kozhikode in setting up a digital library of newsclippings, the digital equivalent of the traditional press clipping service, using Greenstone software is also shared.