2008/9/24 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2008/9/24 John at Darkstar vacuum@jeb.no:
In Norway a university has a large collection of newspapers, the collection is claimed to cover around 3000 running meters in the store house - without the norwegian and nordic newspapers, whats left is international newspapers from the last 150 years. If no one is coming up with a solution the collection is going to be destructed (actually burned)
Traditionally, old newspapers in libraries would be converted to microfiche, why aren't they doing that?
It is quite possible that they already have been, or that a similar collection elsewhere has been done, at which point it becomes moot.
Alternately, it could be that they've said - well, thirty other institutions have these, we never use them, they're a dead weight in our collection so we need to dispose of them. (This is very convincing - all libraries always need more space, and freeing up 3km of shelving? It's a dream). If there are several other copies around, then there is no pressing need for *this* to be the collection that gets digitised - someone else, someone with funding, is probably already planning it.
I note that no other institution is interested in taking this collection. That, to me, would strongly suggest it isn't unique...