Filming of South Asian newspapers

[Guest guest]

There appears to be an organized effort by certain Western

research libraries to identify and to film all South Asian

newspapers, present and historical.

http://www.arl.org/newsltr/206/icon.html ;

http://www.lib.washington.edu/Southasia/iconpaper.html

The effort has run into resistance from some South Asian

libraries possessing copies. The problems encountered, and

the attitudes revealed, when permission to film has been

sought are interesting for what they also suggest about

current attitudes towards scanning old manuscripts and books

in South Asia:

 

"Of the 2,500 hundred titles for which I have located

holdings, 55% or 1,350 are not currently available in

microform. Most have ceased and exist only in fragmentary

runs or even single issues. Many of these holdings are in

institutions in South Asia where there is, at times, a

resistance to microfilming unique materials. Microfilming is

preserving, but it is also replicating. An institution's

funding may be based on the numbers of researchers drawn to

it to use materials unavailable anywhere else. Replicating

those sources is seen as having the potential to weaken or

even destroy an institution's funding base by taking away

its unique character. Some archives make it difficult even

for individuals to obtain a complete copy of single

documents, so great is this fear of replicating an archive's

holdings. Projects, which from the western viewpoint look

like win-win for both sides, have fallen through on just

this point. Western institutions, willing to pay for

filming, are like the date who has paid for dinner and the

movies, they want a bit more than "Thank you, it's been a

lovely evening". They want access by either owning the

negatives or receiving copies for their collections. Some

archives, newly introduced to capitalism, believe that there

is money to be made and that we are just an extension of a

former colonial power, now returned to strip mine their

intellectual property and they would prefer to go it alone.

And even when the situation is favorable and they are

willing to allow filming, our interests may not coincide,

what we are want filmed may not be what they want filmed. We

need to encourage local efforts at preservation for its own

sake. We should pay particular attention to smaller

institutions with more limited resources, such as those in

Bangladesh or Nepal and, for diaspora papers, those in the

Caribbean, Mauritius and East Africa." [see fn. 1.]

 

Why, I ask the void, is there no comparable organized effort

for manuscript and book materials? How did this one get

started? Who pays for it? Given the existence of this

program, it would behoove the Indian research library system

to make proposals to these or other libraries to suggest a

joint, systematic, and even more successful approach.

 

David

 

p.s. The article is also interesting for its historical

data. E.g., the first NRI newspaper was started in 1887:

"In 1887, in Singapore, a Tamil language newspaper, the

Singai nesan was started. It is the first I have documented

which was published by and for a diaspora community."

 

 

 

1. quotation from

 

"South Asian Newspapers," by

 

Irene Joshi

South Asia Librarian

University of Washington Libraries

 

presented as part of the

Symposium on Access to and

Preservation of Global Newspapers

May 27-28, 1997, Washington DC

 

http://www.lib.washington.edu/Southasia/iconpaper.html