With each passing week, we continue to hear news of the newspaper industry collapsing. Newspapers are closing down or scrambling for new models for journalism. Many of us are watching this happen from the sidelines, shaking our heads about how sad it will be without the newspapers in the library. Will we stand by and watch as other print industries struggle in the same way? What will happen to libraries after these other industries close if we do not act? It reminds me of Niemöller’s famous poem, the last line of which is “When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

We need to be concerned about the loss of a community’s newspaper. While the role of passing on local community news is still being done through other organizations such as local television stations, newspapers have been the significant players in the role of creating and maintaining an ongoing community history. Most of the history of local communities since the mid-19^th century has been captured by newspapers; any scholar doing historical research spends a significant amount of time with a newspaper history of local culture. If newspapers disappear, who will create and preserve the heritage of a community? Googlepedia is not focused at the local community level and has little way of determining events that are important to a local community.

Who will maintain the ongoing record of the events of a local community? There are several cultural institutions that could do this. If there is a strong local history museum or local archive for a community, then that organization could step forward to become the primary source for the preservation of cultural heritage. If there is not such an organization in a community, then the closure of newspapers represents an opportunity for public libraries. Librarians are trained in building collections, in describing those collections, and in making those collections available. In addition, libraries understand the local communities in which they are placed, so they have the knowledge about what is important that Googlepedia lacks. The public library can see the local news items as a collection to be maintained and made available online, and can play a significant role in the preservation of local cultural heritage that newspapers have played in the past.

This is a new role for libraries. Libraries typically gather what others create, but do not create the items themselves. If the newspapers close, who will create these news items for the collection? There are several possibilities:

• The local television stations continue to create local news items. While video clips are not as easy to scan as newspaper articles, the library could partner with local television stations to create a single community archive of items significant to the history of an area. Many stations will also have transcripts of their stories, and these could be embedded in the search functions.

• As libraries become more participatory places where library patrons create items as well as consume items, the members of the community could become the journalists for that community. The library can lead an effort to empower members of the community to create news items, training them on what is important to collect and how to present the news in a standardized form so that it can be easily archived.

• Libraries can reach out right now to their struggling newspapers and discuss a partnership. While libraries know about the development, organization, and access of collections, they typically have little experience in collecting interviews and oral histories and knowing how to create these news stories. There are journalists at closing newspapers who might be thrilled with the idea of working for a library as a news director, organizing the collection of stories, training librarians and community members in how to collect the local news, and continuing their work in a different setting. The newspapers have a network of advertisers who might be able to help fund a projects.

If we stand by and watch as newspapers shut down and the journalists scatter to other jobs, we lose the opportunity to create partnerships that could preserve at least the goal of the newspaper – to create an ongoing record of the history of a local community. A partnership formed now between newspapers and libraries would be good for both – it would increase the role of the library in a local community and allow an important cultural preservation role of newspapers to continue. There is a very short time window as newspapers collapse in which to develop these partnerships, so I would encourage local public libraries to contact their local newspaper and talk about what kind of a partnership model might make sense to allow both organizations to continue and to build community engagement in this new role of a shared collection and preservation of cultural heritage.

]]> http://plablog.org/2009/03/threats-to-newspapers-are-opportunities-for-libraries.html/feed 18