However, the FRD staff relies on first-hand screening of available newspapers from throughout the world. We need complete coverage in context with other news and we need to see materials in original language to better understand current foreign-language terminology. The key word here is availability. Not all newspapers we want are available although the most national-level newspapers are in the Library of Congress collections. The corollary of availability for us is often but not always timeliness.
Current newspapers are important but complete runs of older newspapers are critical.
At this time, the Library of Congress currently receives some 700 foreign newspapers, both in English and foreign languages. In an era of shrinking resources, my division has to be as smart as possible with its research. While we would like to screen as many different newspapers as possible to collect information, there is neither the time nor the funds to do so. Instead we have to focus our searches on the titles that produce the consistently most useful information. For example, FRD recently conducted an in-depth survey of foreign periodical literature covering medical and public health related topics.