Newspapers online conference hears proposed model for digitizing content

The National Library of Canada heard from dozens of stakeholders in the electronic newspaper industry on October 7-8 as part of its current consultation into helping the sector. Delegates at the Reborn Digital - Digitization of historical Canadian newspapers conference heard from several private, public and academic leaders in the field of digitizing newspaper content for public access. While the proposed models for posting journals online differed among speakers, several common challenges emerged, including difficulties establishing standardized indexing, a lack of resources, and hard choices between making the publications easy to use or saving money with bare-bone versions.The conference was held in collaboration with the Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries, the Canadian Newspaper Association, and the Association for Canadian Studies.While the National Library isn't currently digitizing back issues of historical newspapers, participants heard from several private-sector partners and schools that are already doing so. The most prominent and well-publicized effort is currently being undertaken by Cold North Wind Inc., which has digitized the archives of The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, as well as several other Latin American and Eurasian journals (CNM, Feb. 22/02). The company, based in Ottawa, runs both a digitization service and a subscription portal web site to view the holdings.In his address to delegates at the conference, president/CEO Bob Huggins said there is a valuable role for the private sector in digitizing historical papers. He stressed that libraries have often relied on the philanthropy of prominent business people, including Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and most recently Bill Gates.Though Cold North Wind isn't providing its services without charge, Huggins said the company has chosen a different route from other commercial digitizers in the field to keep costs low. While technologies such as zoning are implemented by some companies to ease access to particular items, Huggins told delegates that the company is more interested in putting out a large volume of material. It digitizes pages for about $0.30 each as a result, significantly less than with other technologies such as OliveSoft. As a result, Huggins noted, the company expects to have 12 million pages of content online by the end of the year, many from smaller circulation publications.Echoing Huggins' rationale for foregoing complex automated digitization processes, the Alberta Heritage Digitization Project's (AHDP) Tim Au Yeung told conference delegates the ADHP initiative is sacrificing some accuracy in favour of volume. The AHDP, with about $650,000 in federal and provincial funding, is attempting to digitize every historical newspaper in the province - no matter how small. "I think if there is one person willing to use it, that's sufficient enough for our purpose," said Yeung.The project doesn't make use of high-end optical character recognition and zoning techniques, but staff hears regularly from users when they encounter mistakes, and feedback is encouraged. "That is a relationship that has worked out very well because it gives our user base a sense of ownership, as well…We actually talk to our users. The fact that we're willing to listen means that they're willing to talk to us on a fairly frequent basis."Because the AHDP is a grant-driven initiative with restricted resources, Yeung said the project staff is also seeking ways of re-using indexing materials, for example, from volunteers and local librarians.At the other end of the scale, Stephen Abram of Micromedia ProQuest described his company's high-end digitization tools. The company, which will spend upwards of $90 million over the next three years to digitize collections such as the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post and the New York Times, employs technology that can provide up to 99.998 per cent accuracy in optical character recognition.

Newspapers online conference hears proposed model for digitizing content

Broadcast | October 16, 2002

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