Report from the ACRL ESS Slavic and Eastern European Discussion Group + Social Sciences and History Discussion Group on 29 June 2020: “The Worsening Foreign-Language Newspaper Crisis at North American Research Institutions”

For North American research libraries, collecting and maintaining print or digital access to foreign-language newspapers published outside North America is a significant challenge, one that will only increase in the coming years. The list of newspapers that are of value to researchers is long, yet fewer and fewer institutions can afford the cost and administrative burden of maintaining individual subscriptions to hundreds of titles from around the world. Both print and digital formats are expensive and difficult to maintain. The most stable and sustainable format, microform, is disappearing rapidly as vendors cease to offer it.

This informal discussion featured Judy Alspach (Area Studies Program Manager at the Center for Research Libraries) and Angela Cannon (Reference Specialist for Russia and South Slavic at the Library of Congress). Our speakers provided an overview of how various academic libraries and national institutions with large non-English-language and non-Roman-script newspaper holdings are dealing with this issue and how they have historically dealt with newspaper acquisitions in the pre-digital era before moving to a discussion of the current situation. Where is the common ground, and what are the challenges unique to a particular language/region? How can we work together to improve access to foreign-language newspapers in print and online formats?