2023 Volume 33 Issue 2 Pages 148-155
The scope of regional materials is wide, but PR magazines issued by local governments are published by almost every municipality in Japan and are considered to be highly important regional materials. Printed PR magazines are collected and made available at public libraries in each region, but in recent years, with the advance of digitalization, digital PR magazines are now available directly on local government websites and so public libraries are rarely involved in digital PR magazines. While some municipalities are digitizing and making publicly available even their first PR magazines published some 70 years ago, there are many municipalities that only publish the latest 2-3 years of digital PR magazines on their municipal websites, making it difficult for citizens to easily access past PR magazines. Therefore, a survey was conducted individually among public relations departments of local governments that will oversee publishing PR magazines in 2022 to find out their thoughts on the digitization and openness of PR magazines. The views on the digitization and openness of PR magazines differed greatly. In this study, challenges for promoting the openness of past digital PR magazines are clarified.
