Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

1.  

   

   Rhelic, Nov 18th, 2004 @ 6:27am

   
   

   Sounds more usefull than it is

   I'm fully against this project because I feel it is a unbridled waste of tax payer's money and for the reasons I have discovered on my own, listed below.
   
   I worked as an IT person for a group that owned a newspaper; we wrestled with the idea of taking out archive and hiring a team to OCR scan & submit stories into the CMS I wrote for the newspaper's website.
   
   The ironic part is that it sounds like a really great idea but you have these problems...
   
   #1 How useful is it really? Old news has very little value after it gets a couple of months old, mind you, don’t confuse educational material with news, which often is only of value today & now.
   #2 From a commercial aspect, this is very expensive, I calculated for our newspaper it was going to be around $7,000 per 1 year of newspapers.
   #3 Because of #1, there is a very, very low demand for this old news, and because of this fact, it's hard to charge for it. This fact makes #2 a wasted investment.
   
   Unfortunately the concept of scanning old (especially really old) newspapers into a digital system sounds really useful, in reality it's a self promoting idea and has no value outside of your own bubble. If you disagree, perhaps you've been watching too many movies.
   

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

2.  

   

   Eugene, Nov 18th, 2004 @ 7:33am

   
   

   You need to know what you're looking for

   I would probably use it. There are long lost friends that I can't seem to find anymore, and it'll get worse in the future. It would be helpful to be able to view the obtituary & wedding archives. I'm sure I've lost some high school buddies to the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, and I'd like to read more about them than I can find on Cryptome.org. There were articles in my hometown newspaper in the Sci&Tech section that I'd still read even now. The articles from shortly after 9/11 would be interesting, even if it might be an emotional burden to read.
   The like to see science journals. Some journals are starting to make their older articles free, but it's still too sporadic for me.
   I totally think this could be done well. The Air Force has almost every new article and research paper available electronically, and anyone that plans to get anywhere in the Air Force will utilize these archives at some point in their career. I'm just an E-5, but I've used it many times during school and personal education.
   It may suck to have to scan old things in, but hopefully that provides publishers with more reason to store their materials electronically.

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

3.  

   

   Mike, Nov 18th, 2004 @ 9:43am

   
   

   digitizing newspaper archives

   This is all about historical newspapers, not last week's or last year's issues. They're talking about the pre-1923 material that is in the public domain. As for it being a waste of taxpayer's money... Get a grip! It's a library. It's our national library. This is what libraries are for.

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

4.  

   

   DV Henkel-Wallace, Nov 18th, 2004 @ 9:59am

   
   

   Re: Sounds more usefull than it is

   The deal is, nobody knows at the time what will be useful in the future. And at least you get some economy of scale by doing a huge amount at once.
   
   Currently, a big part of what librarians do is discard material, but that's due to a technical limitation. Essentially think of them as constructing an index -- which is constrained by the physical size of the library. When your library can be infinite, librarians can, with the aid of technology, construct lots of particular indices. The reality is that there might be only one reference per month to the records of June 1892. But someone who wants to find that small mention of a medal given out to some insignificant private who only later became a general officer, well, her job just got easier, or even possible. That is why it's worth it.

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

5.  

   

   Lois Hyser, Jan 20th, 2008 @ 11:36am

   
   

   newspapers

   I have spent the last two days trying to find free old newspapers on line. Wanting to know what happen years ago is very interesting. Why does someone always have their hand out charging for every little bit of info. Just everyday info. , what ever was in the news years ago. I would love to see all the old newspapers on line!!!!

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

Add Your Comment