The preservation of newspapers in Sweden an identification of problems

The main purpose of this thesis has been to identify and discuss problems connected with the preservation of newspapers in Sweden. Another purpose was to see if the preservation of newspapers has been influenced by the fact that preservation studies in general concerns printed monographs and digital materials. This qualitative study is partly based upon interviews with four librarians experienced in working with newspapers and preservation. The thesis deals with cultural heritage in general and on a more specific level with newspapers where the following questions are dealt with: Why preserve? Who preserves? How to preserve? and What is preserved? Strategies used for preserving newspapers such as paper, microfilming and digitization are described as well as legal deposit, the Swedish microfilming programme and TIDEN, a digitization project of newspapers. We have found that the main problems concerning preservation of newspapers are economy, storage, handling and poor paper quality. The tension, which lies in the libraries' task both to preserve and provide effective access to materials, is found to be a fundamental problem, especially when it comes to newspapers. We have come to the conclusion that preservation of newspapers is neglected and more research needs to be done in all preservation strategies, not only concerning digital materials.Uppsatsnivå: