E-journal databases: banche dati della produzione giornalistica italiana

Even though journalism is a strong and important economic sector in Italy, few Italian newspapers and periodicals are available in archive form in the Web. Even fewer of these publications are available as databases, i.e. structured archives that permit searching with keywords and citation data, and not simply browsing of online issues. The Guide to Italian Databases, a Web-based resource describing online and portable databases with content focused on Italy, offers a starting point for analyzing the offer of Italian journalistic databases (e-journal databases). The latest update of the Guide identified 43 e-journal databases, including 20 periodicals, 18 daily newspapers and 5 newswires, offered directly to the user by the producer or through the services of a database aggregator. Since 1999, the offer of Italian e-journal databases has grown, but the turnover of products at the latest update was notable. This panorama of Italian e-journal databases suggests that in Italy it is difficult to market "information" as a product. This lack of access to journalistic information in Italy may contribute to limiting the country's competitiveness in a global context