Hi all,

How timely a discussion! Yesterday I posted a press release about Colorado's Historic Newspaper Project, our first foray into digitizing newspapers on microfilm on a statewide basis.

For the project we will be working with microfilm created under the US Newspapers Program and held by the Colorado Historical Society.  One of the aspects of our grant will be to review our success rate based on the quality of the film (we're using master dups whenever possible). Stay tuned! http://www.cdpheritage.org/newspapers/

We certainly don't see digitization as a direct preservation method and are as much concerned with the long-term preservation of the digital versions that we will be creating.  This means developing good best practices that use sustainable imaging formats and preservation metadata.  At the moment we're just working with newspapers that have already been filmed but as the project matures we hope to investigate best practices for capturing newspapers that have not been filmed yet, or need to be refilmed due to poor quality masters.  Right now we have enough film to keep us busy for the next few years.

Digitization is a wonderful for access and our project will be offering full text searching of articles, advertisements, and photo captions.  Digitization will indirectly serve preservation by reducing wear and tear on existing film copies and original papers.  The index will provide a citation to page and column numbers so researchers who want to see the "real thing" can go directly to what they need. (Not to mention the wear and tear on researchers blurry-eyed from starting at whirling microfilm).

As an earlier poster mentioned, if you're trying to find master copies of your newspaper's microfilm check with the US Newspaper Program website for a list of contacts in each state, usually the state archives, library or historical society.  http://www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html

Richard Urban
Operations Coordinator
Colorado Digitization Program
[log in to unmask]
www.cdpheritage.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Lynne Ranieri <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Nov 4, 2003 8:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Microfilming newspapers

    Bobrien asked: "When the newspapers were filmed weren't preservation
copies made of the film.  For preservation purposes one copy should be on
polyester.  This copy is kept and hopefully never used (polyester is so
strong it tears up the equipment). The next generation should be a master
copy.  From this copy a third generation copy is made."

    The first question I asked of the library director was whether he had a
master copy somewhere, from which subsequent generations were created, and
he just said, "No, this is all I was given."  Those microfilms were a
courtesy copy from the publisher, so based upon what you are telling me,
perhaps I will write to the publisher and ask if *they* have a master copy
somewhere.
     Thank you for the information!
Lynne

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