Dear MLS Members,
The MLS Executive Board decided at its May meeting not to renew two online newspapers. Access to these titles will end on June 30th.
- Springfield Republican
- Cape Cod Times
This decision was the result of accepting the recommendation of the MLS Online Advisory Committee, which provided two main reasons:
- Use was too low for the quoted price.
- There is an equity issue because many local communities are losing access to newspapers when the ProQuest Massachusetts Newsstand service ends on June 30th and, MLS, as a statewide organization, needs to keep a statewide focus.
Because access to local news content is so important to libraries, the Executive Board also moved to ask the Advisory Committee to seek alternative solutions to allow access to these and other online newspapers. MLS will be working with the Committee and vendors to seek such access, perhaps via a collaborative purchase arrangement.
We will keep you posted on our progress.
Thanks,
Greg
