In today’s digital era, digitizing newspaper news archives is very important to do. The digitizing process needs to be done to facilitate access to the acquisition of information for students and general public. The notion was raised in the discussion titled Digital Archiving of Materials from Southeast Asia and Acquisitions, which was held by UGM Library, Thursday (25/3).
Dr. Jefferey W. Petersen, librarian of Cornell University of United States, said the idea of digitizing the newspaper is partially to overcome the limitations of newspaper storage space in the library. By collecting various kinds of printed newspapers, of course, libraries need much space while, the library’s room is very limited. "Therefore, by packaging and archiving it into digital files that can be accessed and stored in computer software, it will provide the library some level of efficiency," he explained.
In addition, the digitalization of newspapers is also intended to overcome the problems of budget decrease of university libraries in the United States. Through the digitalization it is expected to minimize the budget to buy newspapers.
On that occasion, Petersen also submitted plans to establish cooperation with universities in Indonesia in terms of digitalization of news articles archive from Indonesian newspapers. "Cooperation for digital archive is open to universities and subscribers in Indonesia. With this cooperation, it is expected to help American and Indonesian students in accessing news articles about Indonesia," he added.
With this partnership, universities / institutions involved can access newspapers resources that are archived at the Cornell University Library as well as getting the backup data. Cornell University has a collection of digital journals and newspapers in the library. Only by visiting the Cornell Library website, visitors can choose categories of newspapers based on the keywords in the search box provided. Up to this date, Cornell University had archived newspaper article before the ’50s from Indonesia.
UGM Head of Library, Drs. Ida Fajar Priyanto, M.A, on the occasion, said that the company is now attempting to get the old newspapers at the National Library. This time, UGM tries to be more specific about the digital collection of the newspaper.