RetroNews

ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW RetroNews

doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.51

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

Date of Review: September 10, 2020

<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.

ly newspapers were printed in a typeface that contemporary readers, especially those new to historical sources, might find difficult. This is not a complaint specific to RetroNews though; many students have difficulty interpreting historical typefaces and primary sources in general.

Newspapers are subject to serious degradation over time, and RetroNews—being essentially a digital preservation project—selects content largely based on the physical conditions of its print holdings. However, additional criteria, such as comprehensiveness and significance of the content to French history and the identities of creators, publishers or contributors in the primary sources, are also used to make digitization decisions. RetroNews furthermore ensures that newspapers from its former colonies and recognized historical publications are included in the database. The full list of titles is available at <https://www.retronews.fr/titres-de-presse>.

Like Gallica, the BNF’s flagship digital library, RetroNews includes certain features for digital humanities research. One can easily perform term frequency searches to understand how a person, concept, event, or organization was covered in the media over a desired time period or across different publications and perform bulk downloads of the text files for personalized analyses.

In describing the historical newspaper holdings of the BNF, Thouny & Manchette (2018) state that its collection spans 44 linear kms of library shelving and is increasing every year due to legal deposit. In 2016 alone, 16,000 newspapers were digitized and added to the database. The project is enormous, and RetroNews is the perfect vehicle through which to digitally disseminate such important sources.

User Interface/Navigation/Searching Like many databases that provide historical content, browsing is encouraged. Users can browse by daily content, time period (16311950), title or location of publication, type of publication, and theme. The themes for browsing include The Grand Century during the reign of Louis XIV, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the taking of the Bastille, Abolition, the Vienna Conference, Restauration, the Second Republic, and World War I, among others. There are also videos in addition to print texts, but they mainly consist of animated versions of articles with photos intended to display interesting headlines and images.

Searching is highly efficient. During the writing of this evaluation, a researcher at the University of Ottawa required articles in the French press about the first heart transplant to have ever taken place. The keyword search phrase was “greffe de coeur.” The search engine picked up this phrase exactly, as well as related phrases such as “coeur greffé.”

In addition to a smart search engine, RetroNews features sophisticated optical character recognition and a lexicon that translates historical to contemporary usages of terms (Thouny & Manchette, 2018). The lexicon allows historical place names to be located whether one searches for the historical name or its contemporary equivalent. The same applies to people, organizations, and events. RetroNews has also included the International Press Telecommunications Council Media Topics classification to categorize topics (see <https://iptc.org/ standards/media-topics/>) so that contemporary events can be linked to content in the database. Accessibility Web content accessibility guidelines (2.0) specify that web content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, 2008). The requirement for websites to be perceivable means they should provide text alternatives for images displayed on screen. RetroNews does not include alternative text for images, and thus would not be compliant with this standard for web accessibility. The images are overlaid with related, readable text headlines, but the images themselves are not described. Videos are also not captioned even though there is a summary describing the video below the screen when not in full screen format. However, this also does not meet accessibility standards set by the WCAG. Overall, the design of the RetroNews site is intended to be aesthetically impressive which it has accomplished, but visually impaired users will not be helped by the beautiful design and images. Further, it is unclear how screen readers would function on the site. Library staff considering this database would be advised to evaluate the website for local standards of web accessibility.

Critical Evaluation No other newspaper database currently on the market offers such a well-designed, easily searchable collection of historical news content with such high-quality scans. RetroNews is unparalleled for its visually appealing access to digitized, historical newspapers. Its look, functionality, and content are the envy of countries struggling to digitize and offer broad access to their print news heritage. It is an incredibly useful tool for anyone studying French history, European history, the evolution of mass media, publishing, and reading in France and continental Europe, philosophy, political science, and related fields. However, the language barrier will automatically render this database difficult for undergraduate students in North America, though this concern should be less important for Canadian institutions. In addition, pricing will cause many universities in the US and Canada to study closely whether this is a useful addition to their digital holdings, especially when access is limited to subscriptions and not available for purchase.

Competitive Products RetroNews can work in tandem with the existing, free content available at <https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/>, though one does not need to use the Gallica site in order to find articles in RetroNews. Nonetheless, if you find a reference to a newspaper article in Gallica for which there is no full text access freely available, it will likely be accessible in RetroNews. RetroNews is produced by the BNF through a partnership with affiliated organizations and therefore stands apart from Gallica’s general online offerings. Subscription revenues are reinvested into the digitization of further titles. Unlike static news sources that are perhaps updated monthly or yearly, RetroNews adds hundreds of thousands of digital pages to the database each month. The editors also prepare a daily set of news articles that can be e-mailed to subscribers that link current events today with events from the digitized newspapers. For instructors who want to include more primary source content into their courses, this daily e-mail alert can be very useful because the editors find content that relates to contemporary news.

It is also important to note here that even though the content is French and often focused on national or local events, the newspapers cov-

RetroNews Review Scores Composite: HHH 1/2

The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.

Content: HHHHH The content is second to none. RetroNews is the best historical newspaper database the author has used in 15+ years as a history librarian.

User Interface/Searchability: HHHH The interface is pleasant and attractive. Searching is thoughtfully constructed. The indexing that provides links from historical vocabulary to contemporary word usage is an important feature. Intelligent searching helps find related terms without having to think of all possible alternatives. However, web content accessibility is lacking.

Pricing: HHH The cost of RetroNews is a serious barrier. Subscription costs help to fund the expansion and growth of the database, however.

Purchase/Contract Options: HH Subscribing to content instead of being able to purchase it will limit the appeal of this database for institutions with uncertain future budgets.

ered stories from all over the globe. During the Summer 2020 protests opposing police brutality of Black people in the US and around the globe, RetroNews pointed subscribers to articles that covered the Tulsa massacre in 1921 when 300 Black Americans were killed by armed white mobs who burned down entire Black neighbourhoods. Linking the past with the present in this way makes the database so much more useful and relevant to contemporary curricula.

Gallica, the BNF’s original digital platform, is likely the main competition to RetroNews. The BNF has been extremely generous in sharing its print history through the original Gallica platform for nearly twenty years. While Gallica offers impressive content, it is not always easy to search and use. RetroNews is much more user-friendly, is easier for search and download (including whole images of articles), and far more media content is available through RetroNews than was ever available in Gallica. Moreover, RetroNews does not feel like a research tool; it looks and functions as though it was designed for a non-scholarly audience, somewhat like newspapers themselves.

RetroNews’ audience includes historians, literary and philosophy scholars, and students, as well as those with an interest in France as an imperial and European power. As mentioned, all content is in French, so readers should be able to read and understand the language in order to benefit from the database. It would be useful for institutions with Master and PhD programs relating to the content of the database (history, political science, communication, linguistics, philosophy, literature, etc.). Depending on the program, advanced undergraduate students might also use this database. The interface and searching are such that anyone can execute browsing and searching, and the content is engaging enough to use it in a digital classroom at the third- or fourth-year level of an undergraduate program. However, the creators of RetroNews recognized early in their work that they wanted to reach an audience beyond specialists of archival sources and consciously developed a database that would be useful and appealing to a general audience. They accomplish this well enough with editorial additions including what they call “échos” and “chroniques,” intending to create dialogue between contemporary readers and historical sources. In short, subscribers can choose to receive a daily digest of historical sources related to a topic selected by the editors.

Purchase & Contract Provisions The producers of the database use annual subscription revenue to reinvest in the product. Each month more content is added, increasing the breadth and depth of content. However, because the project is ongoing, purchase options are not currently available. Libraries or individuals pay an annual subscription cost. These revenues not only subsidize the digitization and marketing of RetroNews, but one as-

Free Text Keywords: Historical newspapers | Digitized newspapers | Historical periodicals | French history | French politics | French media

Primary Category: History & Area Studies

Secondary Categories: Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary); Other

Type of product being reviewed:Newspaper or news source; Primary source digital content

Target Audience: Undergraduate (including community colleges); Graduate/Faculty/Researcher

Access: Subscription

sumes they would also be used to perform research regarding copyright of the content and seek out appropriate permissions for digitization. None of this comes without major investments. Yet, this is not a private business venture. The goal is not profit but instead greater access to some of Europe’s most interesting historical publications.

Authentication IP authentication is available for institutional subscriptions. Individual subscriptions are also available, where a user name and password would be required to access the database.

The vendor is considering providing COU’NTER compliant statistics, but for the time being, provides user statistics upon request.

Author’s References Thouny, Nathalie, and Étienne Manchette. “RetroNews: Éditorialiser la Presse Ancienne.” Bulletin des bibliothèques de France (BBF), 2018. Contact Information

BnF-Partenariats/Bibliothèque nationale de France

Quai François Mauriac, 75706 Paris, France Phone: +33 1 53 79 59 59 E-mail: <info@retronews.fr> Producer URL: <http://www.retronews.fr/> Product URL: <https://www.retronews.fr>

“Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.” Accessed June 9, 2020. <https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/>

About the Author

Jennifer Dekker is a Research Librarian at the University of Ottawa, the largest bilingual university in the world, located in Canada’s capital city. She has supported access to historical newspapers in both French and English for the past 15 years as the History librarian. n

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