- It requires every physical book published in the UK to be collected by the Library (since 1662)
- It has 60 million individual newspaper editions
- In 1999, the Library earmarked 60,000 volumes of non-British newspapers for disposal because it was running out of storage space (inviting criticism)
- The newspapers were offered to overseas museums, or put up for auction. But the short notice given to museums meant many were unable to accept them (they also needed time to free up physical space)
- The American writer Nicholson Baker used his own retirement money to purchase "2000 bound volumes of American newspapers - the last remaining copies in the world - including a complete run of the Chicago Tribune from 1888 to 1958 and hundreds of editions of Joseph Pulitzer's ground-breaking colour broadsheet of the 1890s, the New York World." [1]
- The physical copies of the American newspapers were saved and become part of the American Newspaper Repository [2] a non-profit organisation which Baker founded. In 2004, the collection moved to Duke University.
- Baker went on to publish a book of the whole affair in 2001 called Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. The Guardian published an interview with him in 2002 (below)
[1] Paper Chase: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/mar/22/museums.re...
[2] From an archived copy of the American Newspaper Repository website: "Research libraries everywhere, including the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the Center for Research Libraries, have replaced most of their often richly illustrated sets of late 19th and 20th century newspapers with black and white microfilm."
Legal deposit is more the rule than exception for national libraries. Many national libraries are also saving copies of the national relevant web.
In the U.S. the Library of Congress has digitized a fair number, but at the state and local level it's really hit or miss. Some states such as California and New York have put quite a bit on line, but many others rely on individual towns and historical societies.
Different pay services cover various papers, but there has never been concerted effort to digitize the staggering amount of microfilm that is out there.
Not just information, but works of art as well!
A few years ago, I trained an image classifier to help me find Krazy Kat comics in newspaper archives. In the process of doing that, I came across a shocking amount of other comics and artwork. I was honestly surprised to see how many amazing illustrations and comics are just sitting in newspaper archives, waiting to be rediscovered.
I dated a newspaper reporter during that era, and all of her stuff went into the online services. But her newspaper's current online archive only goes back to about 2005, even for subscribers.
>Try the British Newspaper Archive for FREE
>View 3 pages FREE when you register to help you get startedThat blog post has a screenshot of an interface where you can chose to search either in "Free To View" or "Subscriber Access" - so presumably you now also get 3 free "subscriber access" pages.
Confirmed: I created an account and I'm able to view unlimited pages with the "Free To View" filter.
Title of this piqued my interest, but looking at the details, but the selection of papers they're adding seems kinda meh. Mostly the sort of local papers that British Newspaper Archive always had, and still can't compete with the horrendously proprietary Gale and ProQuest archives, which have national papers (Guardian, Observer, etc) and require physically turning up to the library to use.
I used to have a pay-as-you-go subscription to BNA, to spite the monthly pay option that I figure I wouldn't make the most of, but it quite scandalously "expired".
Like the Carrington Event & Krakatoa, or Alexander Graham Bell's firewall to stop people stealing electricity, or pirate attacks on junks off Hong Kong.
Put a newspaper up from 100 years ago and see if anyone complains, if they do; take it down. Subtract 10 years every year until someone does complain.
As for newspapers, all it takes is one copyright troll to realize it's happening, and suddenly there's lawsuit settlements everywhere, making him rich.
See: https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/07/03/how-did-the-british-pre...
It's depressing that copyright has been extended so far it's now longer then any single individual's possible lifetime.
There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake. Not only are creators of valuable works is usually pretty distant from direct ownership anyway, there's no possible way for them to profit directly from this work. The only way a spotify-like deal works is because copyright ownership is conglomerated.
IMO, public (especially free-as-in-beer) access to newspaper archives could be pretty liberally justified on fair use grounds.
We're not imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to preserve their cash value. We're imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to stop them from competing with present works. It keeps the cash value of present works up.
Even if the works are not economically valuable, people's attention is, as is gatekeeping control over archives (allowing one to set narratives and agendas and control context).
The time I spend going through an archive (I immediately hit the 3-article registration wall at the BLNA, so ... little time) is time I'm not spending consuming the present-moment adverts-laden infotainment stream.
If there is no value to an article one day later, it’s literally impossible that restricting it impoverishes anyone.
Copyright law is messed up, but demanding access to something by asserting it’s worthless makes no sense.
You have mistakenly generalized "cash value" to "value" without reason. I find a ton of value reading old media, because it allows one to "play the historian", you get a unique and magical ability to experience an era just like its natives have done, except not with their outlook on life or assumptions. It's the closest you can get to traveling to a far foreign country.
This is value, but not cash value. Releasing this media impoverishes no one (in terms of cash value) but massively impoverishes people like me (in the sense of value).
>Copyright law is messed up,
10^grahams_number amen to that, it's bloody ridiculous to withhold something decades after its creator died and their family is now in the 5th generation and probably don't know the thing ever existed.
Copyrights, patents and intellectual property are a blight upon the earth, a massive bug in civilization's conception of ideas and knowledge that no one is willing to report.
Be ironic (A children focused company like Disney pushing thru a change in law that actually in the end harms the children as it limits their access for their lifetime into copyright servitude that shows little thought for the children) if was as would sure add a whole new spin to the "think of the children" sound-bite often used to push thru some change in law/rules.
Still, somewhat sad. More so as we build building today too a standard that is not that long-standing in years by design.
[1] Where X has steadily increased with each copyright law revision.
[2] The US was a weird outlier on this for a long time after most of the world settled on this system.
View 3 pages FREE when you register to help you get started
Explore hundreds of national, regional and local titles dating from the 1700s-2000s
Search, save and organise your favourite topicsThere are plenty of issues with trademarks too, but they are very different to copyright.
As it says in the article
>...So, are [Trinity College] actually saying that no one is even allowed to mention "The Book of Kells", for fear of violating their copyright? If so, that’s really going to fuck up a lot of History books!...
Hopefully this will be like Australia’s Trove.