Shared Custody

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Cataloging all this is a surprisingly intricate project--because both the physical archives and the intellectual property rights still belong to Herald Publications. Herald is a subsidiary of Advance Publications, the Newhouse family company that owned the News and still owns AnnArbor.com. Among other restrictions, the library can't simply scan the bound volumes and can't digitize anything having to do with University of Michigan athletics or anything that was provided by wire services.

Faced with the sale of the News' building, the company had to do something with the material stored there. Putting them in the care of professional information specialists, while retaining ownership, was a smart move. But the AADL is much more than a caretaker. Since the acquisition, its staff has been organizing, cataloging, and digitizing the clippings and negatives, placing the results on a dedicated website, Old News (oldnews.aadl.org), along with pages from the Ann Arbor Argus, the Ann Arbor Argus-Democrat, the Ann Arbor Courier, and the Ann Arbor Sun.