AI breathes new life into digital archives

(October 16, 2026)

Editor and Publisher

Caryn Radick, the digital strategies librarian at Rutgers University Libraries, knows the value of digital archives. In conversation with E&P, Radick recalled her time preserving historical publications while serving as project director for the New Jersey Digital Newspaper Project. The initiative stems from a federal effort — the National Digital Newspaper Program, backed by the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities — to digitize newspaper archives nationwide.

“Newspapers were ephemeral; they weren’t often kept,” said Radick. “People just read them and threw them out, and then at some point somebody realized that it would be good to gather them up. After that, the realization was that paper only lasts for so long, depending on preservation circumstances, so microfilming them would be the good step for preserving them, and then people would be able to access them, as long as there was a light source and a magnification source.”