International Newspapers Conference:Asia and the Pacific

PRESERVATION OF NEWSPAPERS IN THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff

I am very grateful to the Section on Newspapers and particularly to Hartmut Walravens and Ed King for having given me the opportunity to participate in this international conference at the National Library of Australia. All the more since the NLA is hosting one of the Regional PAC Centers. A great thanks too to Jan Fullerton for inviting me.

I assume that you all know IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) but you might not know what PAC stands for. PAC means Preservation and Conservation and it is one of the five Core Activities of IFLA. PAC was officially created during the IFLA meeting in Nairobi in 1984 to focus efforts on issues of preservation and initiate worldwide cooperation for the preservation of library materials. But the PAC program was effectively launched in Vienna during the Conference of the Directors of National Libraries. Contrary to other IFLA Core Programs, PAC has been originally conceived in a decentralized way : a Focal Point, hosted by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris to manage activities and Regional Centers responsible for their choices and policies. There are now twelve Regional Centers, six of them were created in 2004. The Regional Center for Pacific and South East Asia, located here in Canberra and directed by Colin Webb was created in 1989 and has been very active ever since, especially in the fields of microfilming, disaster preparedness and digital preservation, this last item being its pole of excellence. The other Regional Centers are respectively located in Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing, Cape Town, Porto Novo (Benin), Washington, Trinidad & Tobago, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile.

IFLA PAC has one major goal: to ensure that library and archive materials, published and unpublished, in all formats, will be preserved in accessible form for as long as possible according to the following principles :

  • preservation is essential to the survival and development of culture and scholarship - this is particularly true for newspapers and periodicals;
  • international cooperation is the key - we shall deal with this issue later;
  • each country must accept responsibility for the preservation of its own publications.

As I said PAC is concerned by the preservation of all library documents in all formats, which explains why our prior concern focuses on fragile documents, hence on newspapers. Newspapers represent huge collections, which, for various reasons - diminishment of budget, lack of human resources or carelessness - tend to be incomplete. The fragility of newspapers holdings is not to be depicted. Everyone knows that because of their size and because of the acidity of the paper used, newspapers, especially ancient newspapers, are difficult to handle and each consultation worsens their state of preservation. Being the source of undeniable richness for historians, newspapers pertain to our global memory and their preservation is certainly a duty for all librarians and archivists.

1- SURVEYS ON THE PRESERVATION OF AFRICAN NEWSPAPERS

1.1 First survey
The reason why I am here has to be sought for back in August 21-24, 2000 when the IFLA Conference in Jerusalem was followed by an international symposium on "Managing the Preservation of Periodicals and Newspapers". This symposium, held eleven years after the first symposium on the subject organized at the Library of Congress in Washington, was co-organized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and IFLA Section on Preservation and Conservation, IFLA PAC Core Activity, IFLA Section on Serial Publications and IFLA Round Table on Newspapers. Proceedings have been edited by IFLA PAC and published as an IFLA Publication (103) by SAUR. The idea for this symposium originally came from the IFLA Section on Preservation and Conservation to promote the preservation of serial publications, including those in electronic form. At the end of the symposium there were discussions and the African participants called attention to the particularly serious situation of periodicals and newspapers conservation in Africa.
As Chair of the organizing committee and director of IFLA PAC I immediately proposed that a survey be conducted among African national libraries and national archives. The purpose was not to launch one more survey but first to try and make the inventory of the main titles owned by each institution and to find out missing issues. After gathering the answers we expected to be able to see whether other institutions preserved the same title(s) and were susceptible to fill in the gaps by producing duplicates (microfilms or CD ROMs). IFLA PAC wrote the questionnaire, in English and French, and sent it, on behalf of JICPA (the Joint IFLA/ICA Committee on Preservation in Africa) to all African national institutions. Questionnaires were sent in March 2001 and answers requested no later than July 2001.
Unfortunately very few replies had reached us by then and we had to send a reminder with another dead line: November 2001. By that time we had only received 25 answers and it became obvious that we could not draw a clear picture of the situation. The questionnaire dealt with the following topics: information about the institution and description of the collections ( catalogue, number of titles, names of titles of national interest), questions about preservation issues (storage, state of conservation of the collections, restoration of and access to the originals, environmental conditions), reformatting (microfilming or digitization, reading equipment) and communication.

1.2 Second survey
A certain misunderstanding and confusion resulted from the responses. It was agreed, in collaboration with the Section on Newspapers, to undertake a new inquiry. The form established by Else Delaunay was printed on a single sheet in English on one side and in French on the other side. It focused on the most basic questions concerning newspaper holdings in the various institutions to be contacted. A letter was sent together with the form explaining that only newspapers published in Africa should be listed . The new questionnaire was mailed using IFLA PAC mailing list (especially for archives) and to the British Library list. The questionnaire was also mounted on the IFLANET. Main questions dealt with collecting policy (comprehensive or selective), permanent retention (all African newspapers, regional newspapers, national newspapers, local newspapers, microfilms), shared preservation with other institutions, limited retention period, disposal after microfilming. Institutions were asked to join a list of their newspapers holdings with first and last date of publication.

In July 2003, 125 questionnaires were sent to national archives and libraries and a few university libraries in 47 countries. Only 7 answers were received by November 2003. A reminder was sent to 99 libraries and 31 answers were received by January 31, 2004, which represents a total of 38 answers (or 30,89%). As a whole answers to this second questionnaire were much more precise and accurate than those of the first survey but were not sufficiently explicit to implement a strategic project.

1.3 Third questionnaire
This is why Else Delaunay prepared another form focusing on a microfilming project: asking which title was to be microfilmed in priority, the reasons for such a choice, bibliographical information, storage conditions, condition of conservation of paper and which institutions in the country conserved the same title and could fill in the gaps for missing issues. The same questions were asked for a second title. There were also questions about other titles and existing or needed reading equipment for microfilms. Last questions concerned storage facilities of films and master negatives. This third round lasted three months (July-September 2004) and concerned 31 institutions, out of which only 17 answered.

1.4 What shall we do next ?
This brief historical overview of what has been done in five year time proves how difficult it is to conduct surveys and to implement projects on an international scale. Reasons for that are multiple. Countries involved in such projects are sometimes too many and it becomes difficult to have each one of them react and answer according to a same scheme. There are also cultural and linguistic differences, but most of all economic discrepancies : lack of resources and lack of staff can make any form of co-operation difficult if not impossible. In the case of this particular survey difficulties also arose because, generally speaking, and I would not like to appear politically incorrect, preservation in Africa is a newer concept than in Western countries for instance.
Africa has long had an oral tradition, which can partly explains why the preservation of African documentary heritage lacks behind. At the same time, as publishing activity is still low in most of the African countries and as the preservation of archives has not been steadily taken care of, it is of the utmost importance that newspapers holdings that reflect the daily life of the country, the region or the city, be preserved or rebuilt. This is why it is now necessary to list the titles indicated as to be saved in priority, to look out for complete collections or microfilms of the same titles conserved in other institutions.
Next step will be to find money in order to microfilm these titles, so as to fill in the gaps in the collections that are incomplete. The IFLA Section on Newspapers and IFLA PAC will have to build up a project proposal and find donors: a hard task, all the more since we shall also have to establish priorities between countries and titles. But we are determined and, time permitting, we should be able to succeed, provided that African institutions recognize the necessity of becoming active partners and not only grantees. Provided also that institutions in developing countries are willing to contribute. We know that we shall meet some difficulties with the choice of the process: microfilm v/s digitization, most donors being now in favor of this new process, which is perhaps not the best to be recommended for Africa if we consider the lack of equipment to read CD ROMs or to access the internet. Anyhow, it is essential that, in the case of a microfilming process, masters be conserved in storage facilities that comply to the environmental principles in force, which means that they probably should be kept abroad and only copies will be used for access in Africa.

2- A LATIN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

In Latin America another kind of project concerning the Nineteenth Century Press Rescue was implemented in the nineteen nineties and completed in 2004. Considering the risk of irreparable damage or even disappearance of newspapers collections due to the instability of the medium and the existing limited preservation capabilities, ABINIA (Latin American National Libraries Association) approved a project set up by the National Library of Venezuela to rescue the nineteenth century press, a project which became a pilot project of UNESCO Memory of the World.

The project was divided into three phases

  • Creation of a catalogue so as to create a data base to be used by researchers.
  • Training in microfilming so as to assure the reproduction of nineteenth century press
  • Indexing and digitization of the most representative newspapers in order to publish a CD ROM, facilitating access to information by researchers.

The first two phases were successfully completed and a computerized union catalogue of nineteenth century newspapers was developed and is available on microfilm in the National Library of Venezuela and in several other institutions. At the same time training activities were set up and the National Library of Venezuela organized a microfilm workshop in six different Latin American countries. Thanks to UNESCO contributions, the CD ROM "Nineteenth Century Latin American Press" was edited, presenting almost 9000 bibliographic references and digitized images corresponding to a period of one year's circulation of the most important newspaper from each of the fourteen countries.

In fact the objective of the project was to digitize the most important nineteenth century Latin American newspapers so as facilitate their access either through a CD ROM or on-line.

2.1 Grandcolumbian Press Project
A project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (200,000 US$) and agreed in 1996 was implemented in 1997 by the National Library of Venezuela under the direction of the Director of technical services who was also IFLA PAC Regional Director for Latin America. The purpose was to edit a CD ROM on the "Gran Colombian Press, 1820-18330" containing images from one representative newspaper from each of the participating countries, that is : Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Bolivia.

The first step was the acquisition of the equipment and software. A scanner for 16 and 35mm microfilms was bought. The scanner had to be adapted to a computer and to the software "Paint Pro Shop and Imaging" and a CD Recorder. The difficulties in the setting up of the scanner lasted more than one year and the equipment ready for use only in January 1999. Additional softwares (including Adobe Photoshop) were acquired in 1999. In 2002 it was decided to buy an additional computer to make easier the processes of entering the records, image manipulation and quality control. But there were difficulties with the purchase of the computer which was one year delayed and not in use before September 2003.

Training and hiring of human resources was another aspect and problem of the project. In 1997 seven civil servants were trained to use the equipment. In September and November 1999 project Director attended two digitization meetings in the US, one presented by the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Nebraska and the second one given by the University of Cornell in New York. The person in charge of the digitization process went to the University of Colima, Mexico, to observe the complete process from digitization to the edition of the CD ROM.

Hiring historians to compile indexes, a transcriber and a graphic designer proved to be difficult, because of the high turnover.

Each National Library selected the most representative Grandcolombian newspapers in its country. But, due to the limitations imposed by the CD ROM capacity only five titles were chosen, which represented 3,542 images.

The indexing process was much slower than the digitization. Because of the decision (recommended by Hans Rutimann from the Mellon Foundation) not to apply Optical Character Recognition (OCR), it was decided to comprehensively index all the information contained in the five selected newspapers in order to achieve retrieval of pertinent and complete information by means of name, geographic and subject indexes. The indexing process meant a meticulous reading of each page in order to extract the necessary information to complete 26 different fields in each record. There were not enough specialists of the period who could work continuously on the project, hence the delay in completing the work, which could not be achieved before January 2003.

The quality control process revealed the non-existence of some scanned images and the repetition of others. The substitution or inclusion of images could not be done until the scanner was repaired in April 2003.

A prototype of the CD ROM was received in September 2003, but did not include the final corrections in the data base. Unfortunately, for various reasons the project director and the project coordinator had to leave the National Library and at the same time the National Center for Paper Conservation began its move to a new site in Caracas. Both these situations brought new delays in the project. A new director was hired for the Conservation Center in 2004 and pending activities were resumed after the scanner, which had been slightly out of use because of its move, was repaired. A specialist had to be hired to make it work again.

Both ABINIA and its constituting national libraries supported the project initiated and completed by the National Library of Venezuela. It is an excellent example of a fruitful, though very difficult, co-operation. Although the most important newspapers from participating countries had been identified, few newspapers were already microfilmed. The National Library of Venezuela had to microfilm from facsimile editions or duplicated rolls of microfilm positives sent by the participating libraries. The project was the first of its kind. It served as a trial and showed how difficult it was to find qualified staff for indexing and also to select and train adequate technicians. Moreover , acquiring the right equipment, making it work properly on a regular basis is another difficulty, each failure implying long delays in the completeness of the project.

Such projects gathering different countries and different institutions are too often hindered by the lack of experience in handling new technologies, by the lack of knowledge concerning the conditions in partner institutions and a naive desire of perfection or of exhaustiveness. Projects, and above all international projects should take into account the extreme variety of the various components and keep in mind that the more partners you have, the more different they are, the longer the project will take.

3. DO INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS HAVE A FUTURE?

Which lesson to learn from these two examples ? Shall we consider international projects as the panacea or as an endless endeavor full of traps. Of course, as the director of an international program with twelve relaying centers all over the world I would be tempted to blindly promote the idea that international projects are worthwhile. Unfortunately a rather long experience has made me more cautious. As a conclusion I shall try to list reasons why some projects never succeed or remain incomplete. Causes for failure, or for success, may be organized in different categories:

3.1 Project itself

  • Object and goal of project: the object of the project must be clearly defined and have a precise goal
  • Size of project: too big of a project is necessarily doomed to fail. Ambitious projects will have a better chance of success if they are revised and cut down.
  • Coverage of project: the same rule applies to the coverage of the project which should not include too many participants and in the case of an international project too many countries.

3.2 Project management

  • Partnership: partners selected for participation in the project should be reliable and willing to fully co-operate on a well-balanced basis.
  • Leadership: the institution or organization which takes the responsibility of the leadership of the project must be fully conscious of the overload of work it represents. Moreover it must establish friendly though strict and firm contacts with project partners. Managerial skills and a strong knowledge and respect of financial accounting rules are required from the leader.
  • Sponsorship: no project can succeed without funding. Fund raising is a difficult task, especially for libraries (museums or cultural events -dance, performances…- attract sponsors more easily). The selection of concerned potential sponsors is fundamental. The project proposal must be presented with care and preciseness, indicating goals, partners, existing resources, budget needed and calendar. Once the sponsor found the project leader must do his(her) best to stick to the agenda and to the different phases of the project. The sponsor should never be deceived but on the contrary always informed in case something is going wrong. It is a question of confidence.

3.3 Resources and workload

  • Equipment: special projects require special equipment. Be conscious that equipment purchased abroad may take a lot of time to arrive and when it breaks there may be major difficulties for repairing it (spare parts or technicians may have to come for miles away). New technologies are certainly attractive but not always compatible with the existing resources in staff and equipment of the institution entitled to do the work.
  • Staff: high staff turnover is to be envisaged and represents a major difficulty in respecting deadlines. Do not ask the existing staff to work for the project without diminishing their daily usual work. If you do not have in your teams the adequate specialists to run the project, either train those in your staff who are volunteers or hire specialists for the length of the project.
  • Money: if your project has been well prepared you should not run out of money. Nevertheless unexpected events may require some flexibility in financial outcomes and you may be force to either slightly diminish the coverage of the project or to suppress some of the final products.

3.4 Degree of knowledge and capability

  • Scientific knowledge: beware of hiring or selecting too scrupulous staff who, on account of exhaustiveness or perfection, will spend hours on operations that should last minutes.
  • Technical ability: most projects, especially those including new products, require the assistance of skilled and trained technicians. Be aware the rapid evolvement of technology necessitates a permanent updating of those technicians.

3.5 Unforeseen events

  • difficulties and delays in acquiring equipment or in hiring and training appropriate staff;
  • equipment out of order and difficult to replace or repair on the spot;
  • political changes in the management of the institution leading to redundancy;
  • economic recession;
  • disasters of all kinds.

3.6 Heavy administrative mechanisms

  • in hiring appropriate staff for instance;
  • financial complexity for purchasing equipment abroad.

3.7 Communication and transportation

  • different languages and absence of a common language in use among all partners;
  • lack of communication between partners;
  • long distances between partners and lack of easy transportation;
  • absence of rapid communication networks (e-mails, fax, telephone, regular mails) between all partners.

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Despite all this, I remain convinced of the importance and the necessity of building projects together. "L'union fait la force" as we say in French. Moreover we cannot but observe that being and acting "global" is now the rule. Let us not be afraid of setting up and proposing projects with an international component. The IFLA Section on Newspapers, whose members come from so many different countries and the IFLA PAC Core Activity, with its twelve Regional Centers all over the world must join their expertise and knowledge in order to implement, propose and achieve joint projects. The survey on African newspapers requires a follow up and we need the support of you all to succeed in this endeavor.

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