[Foundation-l] Old newspapers going to destruction

[Sarah Ewart]

On 9/24/08, John at Darkstar <vacuum at jeb.no> wrote:
> 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)
>
> I think the best thing to do is to scan them and make them publicly
> available. Of course neither I or WM Norway can set forth to do such a
> task, but if there should be some wealthy person out there that might be
> able to involve himself in such a task, I think it would be a very
> worthy gift to the mankind (where is the women!) to do such a thing.
>
> When I heard of this I was shocked. Most of us are. I've infact studied
> with the university that attempted tu burn the newspapers. The plans
> have been stalled for now, but some permanent solution has to be found.


I find that really sad. Newspapers are such a vital record of culture
and time. Recently, the National Library of Australia launched a
project, The Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program, still in
Beta, where they are scanning and making available to the public,
Australian newspapers that are out of copyright. Here's the link >
http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home and http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/.
I really love the project and I've been helping with text corrections.
It might give you some ideas, maybe a university or library in Norway
would be willing to take on a similar project.

-Sarah