[Foundation-l] Old newspapers going to destruction

[Andrew Gray]

2008/9/25 Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 8:19 AM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> I fully disagree with Schlottmann.
>>
>> 1. 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.
>
> This is probably true (I've never read that book, but the statement
> makes sense), but given the option between digitization and burning,
> or just straight burning, the former is the more attractive. I still
> can't get my mind around the fact that burning the papers is the first
> and preferred option here.

It's not so much the preferred option - I doubt they actually *want*
to do it - as the only practical option.

If you have no institution willing to take them off your hands, then
you can either continue to spend resources on storing a collection
no-one wants, or you can free up the space and do something useful
with it. Digitisation will free up the space eventually (since you can
junk them afterwards), but it's expensive - who's going to pay for it?
Will the library have to store them for the next five years whilst
they're digitised? Who takes on the ongoing costs of maintaining the
digital archive?

It's a truism in the library world that the only time anyone makes a
noise about caring about a book is when you try to get rid of it. This
seems to be a classic example.

If you want these resources to be preserved, we need to *use them*.
Make a point of saying how good it is we have these collections. Find
interesting uses for them. Do research, do transcriptions, discuss
digitising or opening collections which are currently in storage. This
approach, more than anything else, will ensure they get valued; and if
they're valued, they're kept.

Only expressing interest when they're going for the skip is perhaps
too late to be of any real use.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk