Turning the Page: New Access Strategies for Historical News Content

Faced in 2009 with the loss of its microfilming program the Minnesota Historical Society has sought to rethink how it will provide access to the rich and popular content found in Minnesota newspapers. Several linked digital projects are emerging to both mitigate the loss and to move historical news content access to Web space, perhaps to the ultimate benefit of public audiences. Three speakers from MHS will summarize the emergent projects and will offer an early evaluation of the benefits and liabilities of each. These projects include the repository s National Digital Newspaper Program participation (and a couple related local projects using very similar technical and access models); a partnership with Minnesota newspaper publishers to acquire, preserve, and provide public access to the digital representation of daily and weekly newspapers; and a project to provide access to the news content appearing on media websites (newspaper publishers, as well as broadcast media) using a web-harvesting service. Panelists will consider, for each of these projects, the challenges and opportunities it creates in the areas of technical tools manage and preserve content, collaborations with a diverse set of partners, and mechanisms for affording public access. ABOUT THE PRESENTERS: Dennis Meisner is Head of Collections Management; Jane Wong is Central Collection Services Manager; Sarah Quimby is Library Processing Manager; and Noah Skogerboe is Project Associate, Newspaper Digitization at the Minnesota Historical Society