“Digital Archives That Disappear” (April 22, 2009) is a reaction article to the sudden disappearance of the online newspaper archive “Paper of Record.” Began in 1999, Paper of Record is a digital collection of newspapers (consisting of 21 million images), with a large portion of the collection consisting of Mexican newspapers.
Paper of Record was secretly bought from its former owner in 2006, however, this purchase was not publicly revealed until 2008, when the archive suddenly disappeared. Amidst an outcry from historians who relied on the materials available through paperofrecord.com, Google agreed to let the site resume services under the previous owner, however, its future is still uncertain. For example, there is concern over the possibility of Google charging prohibitive institutional subscription fees for access.
This case raises many interesting questions about the future of digital archives and scholarly research. First, in the case of paperofrecord.com, the Mexican government as well as Mexican universities paid for many of the Mexican newspapers to be digitized. This has upset many members of Mexico’s historian community. Finally, this raises questions about the continued accessibility of online archival collections.
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