I work at one of the largest and most comprehensive state newspaper
repositories in the country.  We are starting to get requests from
conglomerate publishers who want to digitize their titles (going back into the
mid-1800s) from microfilm negatives that we filmed in-house over the years
and which we store and own.

Our relationships with publishers has always been excellent--we recieve free
copies of newspapers to microfilm.  However, the enormous amount of staff
time and money involved in duplicatiing the negatives for digitization, as well
as microfilm ownership rights seem like they must be addressed on some level.
We are hoping to get an "institutional membership" for these digital archives
for which our members and patrons can access either remotely or in-house to
offset some of our costs.

I'm sure other newspaper archives and serials librarians are running into similar
situations. Can anyone offer some helpful suggestions on this?