Usually getting today’s issue of El País, one of the most famous Spanish newspapers, would involve spending more than $1,000 on a plane ticket to Madrid and hours of plane travel and airport delays. However, getting a print copy at the U only involves a trip to the Marriott Library.
According to Aaron Porter, a senior in geography who works as a library aide at the Reserve Desk, the library gives public access for about 1,000 world newspapers. The Reserve is linked to a database with current issues of newspapers from all across the world and in every major language. Anyone can request a copy of any newspaper on the database, and workers will print off the newspaper for the customer.
The service costs $3 for weekday papers and $5 for weekend papers, which contain a lot more information. Customers can also call ahead to order their newspaper.
Porter said the library has been offering the service for about a year and a half.
“You can just come here to the Reserve Desk, or you can call us,” he said. “We just need to fire up the machine, find which newspaper you need … We order them through the newspapers direct and print them in the back.”
The desk gets a variety of requests for different papers, almost never doubling up on requests for the same paper.
“It’s a pretty big database,” Porter said.
Porter also said the service is most popular among international and exchange students.
“It’s really good for the international students who want to keep in touch with their political communities and what not,” he said. “[They] are usually pretty interested in it because they don’t usually get those papers elsewhere.”
According to Porter, most of the student interest comes from students at the U who are on exchanges from Asia.
The world newspaper service provided at the library is little known but is gaining popularity as posters throughout the library announce that 1,000 world newspapers are at students’ fingertips, Porter said. The Reserve Desk usually gets about one request per week.
Some students studying languages at the U said the service would be helpful because it offers more recent material than what they often read in their classes.
“I feel like language teachers should make that common knowledge,” said Jordan Erickson, a senior majoring in German.
Mike Prestgard-Duke, a junior in biology, agreed and said if the newspapers were to be incorporated into language classes, it would make class readings more relatable.