Project News

 

03/27/08 - ICON has issued a formal Call for Participation in the program. ICON was formed in 1999 as an international cooperative body under the administration of Center for Research Libraries (CRL) to support a broad agenda of preservation and bibliographic access to the world’s newspapers. Since its founding, ICON has attracted nearly $1.5 million dollars in preservation grants, with more than $750,000 dollars in in-kind support from CRL, the Library of Congress, British Library, Library and Archives Canada, and a host of other North American repositories. ICON now seeks additional participants to support its expanded mission. The British Library and the Library of Congress have recently committed to support ICON through annual membership contributions, and we urge other institutions to consider the same. The funds will allow ICON to grow to meet new challenges facing our collective institutions in the preservation of our valuable heritage material..

For more information contact Bernard Reilly or James Simon at CRL.

11/27/07 - IFLA Newspaper Conference Program - The 2008 IFLA Newspaper Section announces its schedule at the National Library of Singapore April 1-3, with ICON presenting "Cooperative efforts in preservation of and access to the world's newspapers." (pdf)

08/21/07- ICON and the Center for Research Libraries announce the availability of the digitized version of The Black Press in South Africa and Lesotho: a descriptive bibliographic guide of African, Coloured and Indian newspapers, newsletters and magazines 1836-1976 by Les Switzer and Donna Switzer (G.K. Hall & Co. Boston, MA. 1979.) Switzer is the foremost authority for bibliographic information regarding historical Black South African media.  The Cooperative Africana Microfilm Project (CAMP) of the Center for Research Libraries has recommended the Switzers’ reference work for wider accessibility via the Web.

06/04/07- The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded the Center for Research Libraries a grant in the amount of $350,000 in continuing support for the activities of ICON. During this 18 month phase of the project, ICON will concentrate on Latin American newspapers held in U.S. libraries. The project will have a four-pronged approach which involves reformatting to microform nine important and underrepresented newspaper titles, cataloging Latin American newspapers at partner libraries, expanding the ICON database of International Newspapers, and further improvement the content, value and utility of the ICON Web site. Full announcement (pdf)

05/31/07- With the cooperation of the Conference on Latin American History, ICON has officially announced the availability of Steven M. Charno's Latin American Newspapers in U.S. Libraries : A Union List (1968.) The guide, enhanced with PDF tools such as bookmarks by country, is slated for further enhancements in the next phase of ICON.

04/05/07 - The 2007 IFLA Newspaper Section Business Meeting and Conference was hosted at the Biblioteca National de Chile in Santiago, with well over one hundred attendees from around the globe. The proceedings will be made available though K.G. Saur by year's end. Linda Ronan and James Simon presented "Preservation and Digitization of Latin American Newspapers in the United States" which summarizes the efforts in the U.S. to preserve Latin American and Caribbean newspapers.

03/22/07- As part of its ongoing effort to increase accessibility of key international newspaper reference sources, ICON has received permission to digitize and make available on its website Steven M. Charno's Latin American Newspapers in United States Libraries.

03/20/07 - CRL issues Request for Proposals for the Cooperative Digitization and Dissemination of World Newspapers - Phase One: Latin American Newspapers from the Era of Independence, State Formation, and Early Modernization, 1805-1923.

02/12/07 -The ICON database of international newspapers has been updated
The database now contains records for more than 25,000 titles. Records can display preservation status and title holdings (e.g.: who has what.) Searching /sorting improvements include the option to search by institutional holdings (please note that the ICON database may not include the entirety of an institution's holdings of international newspapers), or by OCLC number if looking for a specific title. In addition, our institutional partners can administer their data by adding records and editing existing data.

ICON encourages potential partners to add their own data to help maximize the database's utility to scholars worldwide. For information on how to particiapte, contact Linda Ronan.

10/31/06 - CRL investigates news archives through digital certification process
As part of its efforts to develop and deliver specifications for the auditing and certification processes of digital archives, CRL has investigated several for-profit aggregators of news content, including Factiva, LexisNexis, and NewsBank. See the corresponding reports at: http://www.crl.edu/content.asp?l1=13&l2=58&l3=160.

08/24/06 - ICON report to IFLA Section on Newspapers, IFLA General Conference (pdf)

06/10/06 - ICON has new Web site
The International Coalition on Newspapers is pleased to unveil its new Web site, with improved appearance and added functionality. In keeping with ICON's mission, the new site provides access to news and information relating to current preservation projects, reports and presentations, technical standards and best practies for selecting, preserving, and cataloging newspapers, and links to resources for the discovery of information about newspaper preservation and bibliographic access.The Web site also provides enhanced information regarding the ICON Database of International Newspapers, a freely accessible resource intended to provide reliable informationon newspapers published outside of the United States. The database contains more than 22,000 bibliographic and/or holdings records for international newspapers.

05/16/06 - ICON report to IFLA Section on Newspapers, Salt Lake City (pdf)

03/15/06 - The University of Connecticut has joined ICON's distributed cataloging effort
ICON staff will work with the staff at UConn's Dodd Research Center to catalog portions of their holdings of Latin American newspapers from the 19th and early 20th century.

12/05/05 - Linda Ronan joins ICON as Project Coordinator
Linda Ronan has joined ICON as Project Coordinator as of December 5, 2005. Linda's previous position was Head of Reference for the Lewiston Public Library (Maine) where she managed the reference department and also handled interlibrary loan, information technology, community outreach, and vendor negotiation. Prior experience includes both academic and corporate library management positions. Linda received her Master of Science in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and a Master of Divinity from Andover Newton Theological School.

10/20/05 - ICON Rights Document (pdf) issued
ICON and CRL have issued a draft discussion paper on proposed baseline terms and conditions to incorporate in agreements governing dealings between libraries and news publishers, micropublishers and digital republishers. See also accompanying cover letter (pdf).

09/01/05 - University of Illinois joins ICON Distributed Cataloging Project
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign has signed a memorandum of agreement with ICON to pilot a system of distributed cataloging of foreign newspapers. Students at UIUC will collect bibliographic and holdings information of uncataloged titles within UIUC's collection and submit data to the ICON cataloging coordinator for the creation of complete bibliographic records. Information will be fed into UIUC's catalog, OCLC Worldcat, and the ICON database.

08/09/05 - ICON update to IFLA Newspaper Section (pdf)

07/29/05 - Interim performance report, July 2005 (pdf)

04/15/05 - A CRL Perspective: The Challenges of Preserving the World's News (pdf)

09/13/04 - National Endowment for the Humanities Awards Center for Research Libraries $350,000 for the International Coalition on Newspapers.