The paper will address two issues present in digital newspaper collections, namely that of long-term storage and access solutions specific to this medium, and takedown requests. The paper will outline the storage and hosting solution in place at Kent State University (KSU) of the student newspaper. The current digital archive contains ninety years of the printed newspaper (1926-2016), both reflecting both digitized and born-digital content. Decisions will be highlighted on the files retained on the dark archive (pod0), and conversely which files are stored on the hosting platform as access files.

 

Then, results will be presented from a recent research which investigated how practitioners from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions address the notion of takedown requests in digital newspaper collections, with a brief conversation on how the concept of ‘Right to be Forgotten’ can be considered. A survey was conducted in the spring of 2017 that included a series of demographic questions in conjunction with some hypothetical and real-life scenarios revolving around takedown requests in digital newspaper collections. As the survey results show, there is a wide array of how takedown requests are currently handled and considered. The survey exposes a gap in practice and ultimately leads to some alarming outcomes in the differences of varied practice. Finally, a discussion of some examples of takedown requests at KSU will be outlined, and the subsequent internal discussions that led to a defining a process to consistently handle such requests.

 

Newspapers are a valuable asset to researchers, and decisions for takedown requests should be made more transparent in the age of ‘open’ digital collections and also lead to ramifications on full-text searching. Holistic newspaper digital preservation needs to address both the care of the raw digital files as well as the integrity of the printed word.