ARCHIVING BRACKET CREEP

Presentation by Jim Hunter
June 7, 1999
Minneapolis, MN

ARCHIVING TIME LINE

SLA Archiving Newslib page by Jim Hunter

I. Introduction

Welcome to the second annual session of the News Libraries program NewsLib LIVE.  This morning we are going to discuss archiving and archiving systems.  Hopefully we will peak your interest and engage in the kind of lively discussion we have come to expect from the NewsLib listserv.

I would like to begin the discussion with a very short summary of something I like to call archiving bracket creep -the phenomena where better and faster archiving tools simply drive us into archiving more and different material.

There are a couple of issues that are driving archiving bracket creep, I would like to talk about those, show a quick general timeline of archiving and demonstrate an example of how archives leap into being.

Finally I want to examine the implications all this has to news libraries and list a few possible outcomes.

II. Why is this happening and what are the consequences?

The Internet is fueling the growth of archives.

 Internet-based world of media libraries resulted in a steady increase in the number and volume of materials to be archived.

 Why –Internet is content hungry. Number of Web pages is said to double every nine months.

 Just because you put your text archive online, you are not done. Remember, 95% of the Internet consists of images;text files are just the beginning.

                                       Where are your images?

                                       Where are your graphics?

                                       Where are your full pages?

                                       Where are your clip files?

                                       Where are you projects?

                                       Where are your print files?

Media organizations, newspapers TV, radio, cable and new media itself  recognizes the value of archives both as a revenue source but more importantly archives generate Web site traffic -archives of the loss -leader of the electronic supermarket..
 

Partnerships and connectivity blur the lines that differentiate the library.


With respect to archiving –it is a function that need no longer be performed in the library, or even by the library.  Partnerships with the photo department so entwine us in their workflow that archiving and pre-press production are seamless.

Likewise, partnerships with the newsroom result in news researchers in the newsroom -not in the library
 
 

The electronic library is more function than form.

 

An example of how easily the archiving function takes root and grows.

The fundamental truth of the Internet age is connectivity –you don’t need to own the whole thing to make the parts work together-that’s what makes this so easy and so troubling.
        We begin using Quark pages for the purpose of stripping the text off these documents for our text archive.

      . At some point we notice the entire paper is published in Quark.

        For less than $500 we can buy a CD-ROM burner setup and create a new archive -the entire paper as a CD-ROM of Quark pages.

        For a little more money we add a PDF Distiller which take those Quark pages and turn them into a PDF file for each publication day.

        We can also create PDF's of series and full pages and offer them up to our newspapers Web site

        We add those PDF's to the files we OUGHT to be archiving from the newspaper Web site.

        Can you appreciate the irony of creating a new information product just to archive it?

The lesson here is for under $1,000 we have created two brand new archiving products , and set ourselves up for the possibility of archiving the Web site –archiving a Web site that contains archives we created.

 We  connect to useful information, wave our magic wand over it and create new value.  We also just acquired a lifetime obligation to create and  manage three more archives-is NO a better decision?
 

The continuous growth of archives has implications for news libraries.


We are encouraged, enticed and compelled into a growing number of these archiving relationships –empowered by the ease of many archiving tasks can be accomplished and vaguely uneasy about our future. Consequently this has implications for news libraries
 

      News libraries will become less editorial based and  more corporate based.

    News libraries must begin to look out upon the world and plan to take part in the business life of the corporation.
 

        Library managers are faced with increasingly difficult choices

       Allocating scarce resources
       Deciding where priorities lie –research or archiving
       What forms news libraries need to take to survive
       We require increasingly sophisticated archive systems –straight text archives just don’t cut it.
       News libraries require professional staff-clerks can’t run these systems
        Is archiving as important as research?
       Which is more important-what do we concentrate on?
       Which one has the biggest payoff? (is that the point?)
 

 III.  Solutions and alternatives

 

   Keep what you know and do the basics well (stay the same).

     Focus on the basics -text and images. Leave the boutique archives to others. Concentrate on providing good research and archives to the editorial department. Define your mission closely and stick to your priorities.
 

    Become an IRC corporate library (Get bigger).

 Create commercial ventures -Web text archives, image archives, information stores, reach out to corporate departments and become invaluable everywhere. Look into data warehousing, take the lead in CARR, news research and training. Do you have the energy for this? Are you up the challenge?
 

    Spin off archiving units (Get smaller).

 Your goal is to provide stellar news research to the newsroom. After all you can make a pretty good case that text archiving is a step-sister to New Media and image archiving is really a function of the photo department. Libraries do research- they should not be production shops.
 

    Outsource archiving tasks (Get global).

 Archiving could very effectively be accomplished outside the library and company for that matter -preferably in an earlier time zone, that way the job is  done when you get into work in the morning. You certainly are going to outsource clip file and print conversions so the convenience and sheer economics of off-loading onerous tasks are pretty attractive right?

    Change your role and point of view (Get a bigger picture)

 Finally, here's another take on this -what I like to call the big picture borrowed more or less accurately from Nora Paul.  I include this one because Nora may be right.  The Poynter school solution  is archiving and news research are components of the same effort.  Our mission as news librarians is to empower people with information. We do that to the best of our ability using and creating the tools at hand. Managing a text archive or creating a CARR database or archiving our newspaper Web site is really just a different manifestation of news librarians empowering people with information.

 My question to NewsLib is  -Do any of these solutions translate into our working world?
 
 
 

 

ARCHIVING TIME LINE

Prepared by Jim Hunter
June 7, 1999
Minneapolis, MN

 

SLA archiving Newslib Jim Hunter Timeline Bracket

Archiving timeline

1970's & before MANUAL SYSTEMS

1980 's FULL TEXT RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS

1990-1994 COLOR DIGITAL IMAGE TECHNOLOGY

1995   INTERNET

1996-1998 INTRANETS

1999-2000 BOUTIQUE ARCHIVES

2000 + DOCUMENT IMAGING and  MASS STORAGE TECHNOLOGY

Return to NewsLib LIVE!