Original scientific paper
Media Literacy and News Libraries in Croatia and their Importance for Digital Age Journalism and Reporting
Gabrijela Gavran
; , University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law, Croatia (Pravni fakultet, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Hrvatska)
Nada Zgrabljić Rotar
; Center for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb, Croatia (Hrvatski studiji, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Hrvatska)
Abstract
Every day newspaper industry in Croatia produces a great quantity of newspaper articles which are not sufficiently searchable and not easily accessible. It has a negative effect on the quality of news reporting. On the other hand newspapers report on daily events and are a source of information for users. Proper functioning of news libraries is of great importance for print journalists. The present practice of the newspaper industry in Croatia in the segment of newspaper documentation shows that the need for news librarians has not been recognized, that is, they have not been sufficiently involved. By using organized data bases journalists and researchers would spend less time searching newspapers and collecting newspaper articles and would therefore have more time to spend on writing articles and checking information. As a consequence the quality of newspapers would improve. The subject of this paper is media literacy in relation to the meaning of functioning of news libraries in Croatia. How should journalists develop their media literacy to be able to understand the importance of news libraries and newspaper archives in order to be able to use them more efficiently? How could they more easily access a news library and be able to better value and analyze the collected newspaper articles and other data prepared by the mentioned service? On the other hand, because of the new technological demands and greater possibilities of application of information technologies news librarians are expected to be media literate and in this way become active partners to journalists. To which extend would greater standardization and efficient digitization facilitate the search for and access to information? How could a better understanding of the importance of news library service start some positive changes in print journalism? The present situation in news libraries in Croatia shows that there is a need for better search possibilities of the past period. The newspapers from the period of Homeland War and the transition period are especially important to Croatian journalists and researchers. The print media journalists need professional help of news librarians when searching for and checking information especially from the nondigitized period.
Keywords
Newspaper industry; news libraries; organized data bases; information checking; digitization; media literacy
Hrčak ID:
133859
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2014.
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