The digitized newspaper collection as national patrimony of the Russian Federation

Current issues of digitization newspapers' collections are in the focus of this topic. The sharing of responsibilities for the digitization of newspapers, the selection criteria and the digitization priorities are discussed. Particularly the definition of the scanning method (in the library or outsourced) and the solutions for the best representation of newspapers either as artifacts or as information set are of a great importance. There was provided a detailed analysis of the activities of the federal and regional libraries, newspapers publishers and commercial information centers devoted to the digitization of the national printed newspapers. The emphasis was made to the problems of practical protection of copyright and intellectual property in digitization of the periodicals and in the usage of these materials by the institutions including libraries.