[Foundation-l] Old newspapers going to destruction

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:03 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/9/24 John at Darkstar <vacuum at 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?

With thousands of papers on backlog and limited manpower resources,
it's probably far too large a task for them to start now. I'm
surprised that they haven't looked into turning this into a profit
source in some way, such as selling people newspapers from the day
they were born (cost of the sale to cover conversion to microfiche and
postage, at the very least), or something similar.

--Andrew Whitworth