CRL AllianceFrequently Asked Questions |
What is the Global Press Archive?
What is the CRL Alliance?
How does the CRL Alliance work?
Will the Alliance result in any duplicate content?
How is content selected?
Who will communicate updates?
What about metadata?
Whom can I contact with further questions?
What is the Global Press Archive?
The Global Press Archive™ (GPA) is an initiative of East View Information Services to present the most comprehensive collection of global newspapers online, in searchable, full-image and full-text format. GPA is rooted in a partnership with Stanford University Libraries and the Hoover Institution Library & Archives to preserve and digitally enhance nearly 30MM pages of their newspaper holdings, and now expanding to encompass complementary titles and holdings in collaboration with a variety of global repositories and rightsholders.
GPA aims to accelerate the preservation and accessibility of these sources, across a great diversity of languages, countries of origin, and perspectives and East View’s Global Press Archive platform is tailored specifically for this mission. Wherever possible, East View presents the exhaustive archive of a given publication. GPA includes both single-title archives (typically those titles with comprehensive and long-standing runs) and aggregate collections of titles (presenting a number of thematically or geographically related titles of generally shorter available runs).
Most GPA collections are comprised of in-copyright content that is made available on a commercial basis to an individual institution or made available to a specific consortium group, in cooperation with the original publishers and rightsholders. In addition, some GPA collections are presented in Open Access when this is possible because the content is in the public domain or through special arrangement with the original publishers. Whether commercial or Open Access undertakings, Global Press Archives reside on a common technical platform and are all interoperable. So an institution with purchased access to in-copyright materials is able to cross-search their purchased in-copyright content with the globally available Open Access collections also.
GPA’s Open Access collections range from newspapers of the Qing Dynasty to large collections of news from Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (a complete list can be seen at gpa.eastview.com). East View offers hundreds of additional archives for purchase, covering a great variety of countries, languages, and historical eras. For more information on available collections, please contact [email protected].
What is the CRL Alliance?
Since 2019, East View has partnered with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) to accelerate the GPA mission. This partnership is known as the GPA CRL Alliance. Through the Alliance, CRL defines and sponsors creation of thematic collections on the GPA platform. These collections will draw from Stanford’s newspaper collection as well as complementary holdings of other CRL member institutions. The Alliance is structured as a multi-year, planned activity in which CRL confers with its member institutions to define priorities and title lists. CRL also provides financial underwriting to make it possible to convert these large collections (typically more than 500,000 pages each). All Alliance collections are available to all CRL members, and some Alliance collections, comprised primarily of public domain content, are presented in full Open Access. As of this writing, the Alliance has sponsored more than 4.6MM pages of newspaper content digitization, of which 2.5MM pages are in Open Access.
How does the CRL Alliance work?
CRL members can find detailed information on CRL’s eDesiderata portal (https://edesiderata.crl.edu/resources/global-press-archive).
The Alliance program includes:
- Delivery of up to 7MM pages of digital newspaper content (~4MM pages of which are planned to be Open Access).
- CRL selection of content.
- Access via East View’s GPA platform.
- MARC records.
- Deposit of master electronic files with CRL for permanent curation and availability for Text and Data Mining.
Will the Alliance result in any duplicate content?
This is avoided whenever possible and logical. Although there are instances in which a title may appear in more than one collection, or a given title is present within an Alliance collection and a previously produced commercial collection from East View, this is normally a case of divergent formats (for example: East View has included the full-text version in a daily/current database and now the deep archive of this title is presented in full-image/full-text format within an Alliance collection, with a deep or exhaustive historical run). In other cases, the Alliance program has elected to re-digitize content found available in other global OA projects or even commercial collections in the interest of improving the quality or persistency of what is available elsewhere. Such considerations are factored into CRL/EVIS deliberations prior to execution. Importantly, in no case does a CRL member institution “pay twice” for GPA content in such instances, as cases of planned overlap are approached with this principle in mind. It should also be noted that content presented though CRL Alliance collections is deposited with CRL for long-term preservation and is available to support digital humanities projects.
How is content selected?
CRL orchestrates content selection as a community-based program, conducting member surveys and soliciting feedback to prioritize regions, languages, themes, collection concepts, and the selection of specific titles. A CRL-managed Advisory Committee oversees the program and reviews proposals by members. Presently, the focal themes are “Community, Diaspora, and World Wars I and II.” All CRL members are encouraged to submit collection or title proposals to the committee. Though East View is not included in the process, our understanding is that among CRL’s criteria for prioritization of proposals are:
- Research value of the available content;
- Geographic spread and language inclusion;
- Representation of various opinions and viewpoints expressed;
- Identification of maximally complete holdings; and
- Rights status of each title.
More information on submitting a proposal is available through CRL.
Who will communicate updates?
East View and CRL coordinate closely and will frequently make joint announcements at conferences or major collaborative junctures. CRL will also always have the prerogative of communicating with its member institutions directly on Alliance matters.
What about metadata?
When producing collections for the Alliance, East View creates MARC records with issue-level holdings data. CRL is at liberty to incorporate the data into any discovery resource it chooses. Publication-level metadata is presented in the original language of the publication, including Library of Congress transliteration where applicable. MARC records are delivered to CRL along with master digital files upon completion of a given collection.
Whom can I contact with further questions?
We’re here to help!
- Questions about purchasing individual collections? Please contact us at: [email protected]
- Need customer service help? Please contact us at: [email protected]
- Have a general comment or feedback about GPA? Or are you a publisher with interest in participating in the GPA program? Please contact us at: [email protected]
- Are you a CRL member, and have questions or comments about the GPA/CRL Alliance? Have content to contribute? Questions about metadata and discovery? Please contact CRL at: [email protected]