Newspapers Collection Management: Printed and Digital Challenges continues the tradition set by Hartmut Walravens, chair of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Newspaper Section, of publishing the proceedings of the various IFLA international newspaper conferences and section meetings. The focus of this book is on the meetings in Santiago, Chile, in May 2007 and at the section meetings at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) in Durban, South Africa, in August 2007.

The first part of the book centers on conference papers presented in Santiago, Chile, which had a special focus on Latin American newspaper collections and looked at activities, needs, and various issues with which those libraries and countries have had to deal with as they take on more digitalization projects. The majority of the articles are presented in both English and Spanish, but a few articles are only in Spanish. These Spanish-only articles come from Mexico and Peru, and include a slideshow presentation from Thomson Gale. One article solely in English discusses the preservation and digitalization of Latin American newspapers in the United States. Other articles in Spanish and English come from authors in Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Colombia, Guatemala, as well as from Finland, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States, France, Germany, and Spain. Topics cover a wide range of digitalization issues, but a large percentage of the articles focus on the history of printing in a particular country, the history and evolution of various digitalization projects, and projects that are currently underway. Chapters covering unique topics include “The Evolution of the Aboriginal Presses in Canada” by Sandra Burrows, “Colombian Newspapers of the 19th Century: Treasures and Memory” by Sandra M. Angulo Mendez, and “Cuban Newspapers in the XVIII and XIX Centuries: Conservation of Unique Existing Issues” by Hilda Perez Sousa. What these and other articles clearly illustrate is the passion, collaboration, time, and effort that librarians and libraries are putting forth in their efforts to save the past and make it easily available for their users.

The second section of the book includes the four papers that were given at WLIC in Durban, South Africa. Three articles cover newspaper collections at the National Library of South Africa, the Library of Congress Office in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Makerere University Library in Uganda; the fourth looks at the future of African newspaper collections in American educational institution (which sadly shows that newspapers from a few countries from Sub-Saharan African are not being collected). These four articles also are presented in English and Spanish. Newspaper collections in Africa also deal with many of the same issues, such as microfilming, cost, new technology, indexing, and access, found in South America.

The book does a great job presenting new and interesting research, but readers might be disappointed with the lack of citations and documentation in many of the articles. Also, because these are conference papers, grammar, spelling, and style formats are not uniform.

This book is a fascinating account of what libraries around the world are doing with their newspaper collections and the many issues with which they deal in managing their digital, print, and microfilm collections. Ximena Cruzat Amunategui, director of the National Library of Chile, writes in her article that “digital libraries share many things with the ‘real’ (traditional, physical) libraries that we know and love: 1. It is focused on readers and patrons. Without readers, there can be no library. 2. It is more than a mere repository. It is a space for encounters and knowledge creation. The road is full of new challenges and discoveries, but the road itself is older than Alexandria” (11). While reading Newspapers Collection Management: Printed and Digital Challenges, one can easily see the new challenges and discoveries that await those on the digital road. This book is highly recommended for those libraries with newspaper collections, as well as those universities with archival, library science, and journalism programs.