The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
www.charlestonco.com 51
ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
RetroNews doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.51
Date of Review: September 10, 2020
Composite Score: HHH 1/2 Reviewed by: Jennifer Dekker University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Abstract Launched in 2016, RetroNews is a dynamic and growing collection of historical French newspapers, magazines, and journals digitized by the National Library of France (BNF) and affiliated partners. It contains digitized primary media sources for French and European history, politics, and culture. The collection currently offers access to 700+ titles published between 1631 and 1950. Unlike some newspaper databases that do not include images, RetroNews includes all the original images accompanying articles.
Pricing Options RetroNews is sold on a subscription basis according to the size of the institution. Pricing requests can be made directly to the vendor. In the case of the institution where the author works—the University of Ottawa—a three-year subscription package for 42,000 full time equivalent students was quoted at €7,000.00 per year for three years. At the time of writing, this translates to $8,260.00 US. This price is high, but
<jdekker@uottawa.ca>
subscription revenue is reinvested directly in the database so that content is constantly expanding.
Product Overview/Description The first French newspaper, La Gazette, launched in 1631. It continued its publication of one to three issues per year until the 1770’s. But with the French Revolution and demand for freedom of the press in the late 18th century, newspapers radically changed. RetroNews allows students of French history, philosophy, and politics the opportunity to compare pre-modern versions of newspapers with those that emerged after the French Revolution and the Enlightenment period. In searching for a comparator, one thinks perhaps of a tool such as the Digital Public Library of America, a portal to digitized heritage collections in the US. However, RetroNews is without competition as a national, historical repository consisting of media content. This characteristic alone makes RetroNews valuable as a research resource in addition to its being a rich source for content about France and Europe from the seventeenth century through to the twentieth. Readers can see policy and legislative changes as they unfold; for example, in the post-Revolution period, the mass media pressured the clergy and King to make many changes demanded by the people. These early newspapers are sometimes coded in language that makes them seem less demanding or more civil than they really were. They are an incredibly entertaining resource for those seeking primary sources in a critical period of modernity. The editors of the database have made efforts to render historical content more accessible to a non-specialist audience, pairing historical sources with contemporary content such as videos and podcasts which help to explain or decode the primary source materials. However, two caveats make the content less available to students in North American institutions: all of the content is in French with no translations (see Figure 1), and although the quality of digitization is magnificent, ear-
FIGURE 1 RetroNews themed collection on the history of the guillotine, an interview, and a contemporary podcast on the topic.
