Research use of digitised newspapers and journals to continue from 2023 to 2027

From the beginning of next year, the new Tutkain agreement between the National Library and Kopiosto, the Finnish copyright management organisation, will provide users with access to an even wider range of resources, including newspapers and journals published by the end of 2021. Under the agreement, copyrighted digitised resources can be used by researchers, staff who provide teaching on research, and students working on their theses at the institutions which are parties to the agreement.

Kimmo Tuominen, the director of the National Library of Finland, is pleased at this development: “The new agreement will provide researchers with access to a variety of recently published newspapers and journals, including material from 2020 and 2021, which were marked by the coronavirus pandemic. Resources from these years are particularly interesting for social scientists and health researchers.”

Valtteri Niiranen, the CEO of Kopiosto, describes the new agreement as important: “We’re happy to contribute to the broad and responsible use of newspapers and journals in research. The agreement ensures that, through us, writers, publishers and other creators receive the royalties they are entitled to.”

Authenticated researchers at the relevant universities and institutions can browse, search for and read newspapers and journals through the National Library’s digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi service. The agreement also enables data mining.
From the beginning of 2023, research use is possible at digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi with the credentials of the following universities and higher education institutions:

•    University of Eastern Finland
•    University of Jyväskylä
•    University of Helsinki
•    University of Lapland
•    Lapland University of Applied Sciences
•    National Defence University
•    University of Oulu
•    Oulu University of Applied Sciences
•    University of the Arts Helsinki
•    Tampere University
•    University of Turku
•    Åbo Akademi University

The Tutkain project of the National Library of Finland and Kopiosto has made digitised newspapers and journals available for research use. The previous agreement, concluding at the end of this year, has provided researchers with access to resources published in or before 2018.

In total, the new agreement gives researchers access to nine million pages of newspapers and journals, some of which have had all of their published issues digitised. All newspapers have been digitised retroactively until the 1940s, in addition to which all issues of newspapers published from 2017 to the present have been digitised.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Openly available newspaper and journal resources at digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi include
•    All digitised newspapers and journals until 1939; public use is based on an agreement between the National Library of Finland and the Kopiosto copyright management organisation, now extended until the end of 2023.
•    In addition, Swedish-language newspapers published in Finland until 1949 and digitised as part of a project for the digitisation of Swedish-language resources have been made available for a five-year term from 2022 to 2026.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -