2008/9/25 Klaus Graf klausgraf@googlemail.com:
I fully disagree with Schlottmann.
- Nicholas Baker has shown in its book "Double Fold"
http://delicious.com/Klausgraf/doublefold that microfilms are not a substitution for the original newspapers. And digitization isn't, too.
I sympathise greatly with his viewpoint, but I wouldn't go so far as to say his book clearly "shows" anything beyond that he is passionate on the subject. It's a polemic, not an analysis; I gave up reading it half-way through because I was becoming frustrated with the one-sided approach.
- National Libraries might have the duty to digitize newspapers but
if they don't do it or if they cooperate with toll access companies like the British Library http://newspapers.bl.uk/? The Public Domain belongs to us all!
The budgets of libraries, especially big institutions, are shrinking continually. We can't just say "oh, they should do this, they should do that" - the money has to come from somewhere.
Digitisation isn't cheap; cataloguing and indexing of digitised material isn't cheap. If these institutions don't get additional funds from somewhere for the explicit purpose of digitisation, then they'll *only* be able to do it as a commercial venture like that, or as some kind of partnership program (as with Google &c).