Newspapers

[AllanY2525]

But what do you do to overcome the lack of indexes?

The solution to making indexes, and a searchable datablase, is called "OCR" software.  This
stands for "Optical Character Recognition".  This type of software can "look" at a scanned image
of a text document, and convert it back to text from it's current image format.

Using this OCR software, a searchable index/database could be built from the individual page
scans, allowing users to retrieve [almost instantly] data pertaining to any subject, date, time,
etc via keyword searchs.

it would be kind of like having a Google search engine for old newpapers.

I have used OCR software when extracting excerpts from a book that I have, in order to come
up with text for putting excerpts of the book on my website.  My OCR software came with my
page scanner, and although it is many years old, it is over 95% accurate when recognizing text
from image files - provided they are scanned with a resolution of at least 300 DPI.

Commercial grade OCR is much, much more adaptive and sophisticated, and many programs have
a recognition "hit rate" of virtually 100%, if they are properly setup.

One of the earliest forms of "OCR" was used on the first Palm Computing devices,
to recognize hand-written input on their screens with a plastic stylus and then
covert the cursive writing into text input.

[Towntalk]

The Public Library's collection of microfilmed newspapers was a WPA project.

If it could get funding I do agree that students from YSU would be a good source for sweat equity.

But what do you do to overcome the lack of indexes?

If you want to find a specific name or topic, if you don't have a date to go on, you're out of luck.

Again. there were some 30 different newspapers published so in order to get a running resource, all of these papers would have to be scanned.

Some time ago on Allan's Yahoo Groups web site I provided a complete list of these papers and their dates of publication.

The first paper inthe Valley was published in Warren when Youngstown was still in Trumbull County. The first paper published in Youngstown was THE OLIVE BRANCH.

As I said these newspapers in microfilm format are available at the Main Branch of the Public Library.

I'd be interested in knowing just how many have ever used this resource?

[AllanY2525]

There are scanners that will scan microfilm, photo slides and film negatives,
most of which are totally automated - you load the film, it starts scanning,
and it doesn't stop until it has fed the entire roll of film through the machine.

There are also large pagebed scanners that can scan items up to 36" by 36"
in a single pass, without having to tear them out of book binders, etc.  The 
reason I suggested the use of volunteers (ie: College Students) is because of
the cost that would [otherwise] be incurred in doing this.

As far as royalties go, I am sure that most of the local papers would [want to]
charge a huge royalty for this kind of stuff, but then - how much are they making
off of it right now? (probably next to nothing at all).  If  something like this could
be done in a feasible and cost-effective manner, then they might go for it and be
willing to reduce their royalty fees if they could get more people to use the stuff
via a convenient, 21st century, online format.

Because these historical documents are very very old, they will continue to
deteriorate until they are someday lost to us, regardless.  If they were to be
scanned and digitized, then they would be around forever - albeit not in their
original, paper form.

One of the things that always bugged me about the M.V.H.S. is the huge
royalties they ask for the use of even a single photograph.  Maybe people would
take more of an interest in the history of the city if they wouldn't make it
prohibitively expensive to do so.

[ytowner]

http://mvred.com is now an entirely local-northeast Ohio news blog...

[Towntalk]

The Vindicator morgue uses two formats: microfilm and bound volumes.

The bound volumes date back to the 1850's with each year a separate book.

Given that each page of each paper would have to be scanned, digitized, and indexed, it would take years just to make The Telegram available on line, not to mention the Vindicator that dates back to June 1869.

The Telegram dates back to the 1850's.

To pay a crew to do all the work the Vindicator would have to charge a large fee indeed.

Then there is the matter of destroying hundreds of bound volumes in order to scan properly.

It would be imposable to clip articles since in doing so would destroy other articles.

The paper only maintains one set of the papers in its morgue, and needles to say that the earlier the editions the more yellowed and brittle they are, so once they were damaged they would be lost for good.

The Ohio Historical Society maintains a complete set of all the newspapers that were published in Mahoning County (Some 30 different papers) on microfilm. If someone or some organization could come up with the money to have them scanned for on line use, and got the permission of the copyright holders to put them on line there would still be a fee for their use and it wouldn't be small.

As it is, the only local library that has this collection is the Youngstown Public Library at their Main Branch.

The Arms Museum has a collection of bound volumes of the Vindicator but is not equipped to have copies of articles made since it would take a copy machine with a large bed to copy the whole page.

When I was gathering newspaper articles at the library, I would make a list of all the articles, the name and date of the paper and take it to the librarian who would total up the cost, and I'd pay in advance and it would take about a week for the copies to be made, but they did a good job and I was quite pleased.

[AllanY2525]

As far as wire articles (such as Associated Press, or A.P. Newswire) most of the
content is NOT pertaining to local events.  It would not make much sense to
pay a local reporter to write articles pertaining to events on the national level, or
events that take place outside the local area - this is the primary purpose for
the news wire services.

As far as subscription fees for online versions of print newspapers, you are already
paying a "subscription fee" to have the paper delivered to your house.  When you
pick up a copy of the newspaper [ie: on a Non-subscription basis] at the corner
store, the grocery store, the newstand, etc - you are STILL paying for it.

I think my idea of a REAL [meaning one that goes WAY back, chronologically]
online archive for the Vindy could be a win-win situation.  The public would
have access to one of the best archives of information in the entire Mahoning
Valley - while the Vindicator would have a new source of revenue, generated
by newspapers that were sold long, long ago - and have already made all the
revenue they could in their printed form.

The Vindy could consider selling access to an online database in two possible
forms: 

1) A "pay for length of time" type of deal where the user could pay to access
the database [unlimited number of searches, etc] for a period of time, say
8 hours, 24 hours, etc.

2) A licensing setup where any useful articles, etc found in the database could
be licensed for legal use [provided proper credit, etc is given to the reporters
and publisher].

I know it's only an idea, but I think it could work.  Educational institutions,
students, historians and researchers could all benefit from such a setup.

[irishbobcat]

All papers carry most of the same wire material because the papers are too cheap to pay local reporters.

I know a reporter for a rural county who worked at the only daily in the county, and was making $9.25 an hour........he finally quit........could not make a living...

and so it goes.....

Dennis Spisak

[Towntalk]

The full Vondicator paper is available to subscribers online. There is a fee for this service.

For larger papers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post Sunday Editions this would be difficult given their size.

There are papers that have dropped their print editions ard will be on line only such as the Christian Science Monitor. Look for more papers to follow suit, but rest assured that tere will be a fee.

At one web site that you can find full online newspapers my web site has a link to them but they are subscriber only to read. There are dozens of papers that are available.

http://reporters.notebook.tripod.com

[AllanY2525]

Maybe if the newspapers were to publish exact copies of their printed
papers online they might be able to increase readership (?)

I have always thought that the Youngstown Vindicator is crazy for not archiving
all of their old editions and making them available online - for a small fee.  This
would be an incredibly valuable tool for those who have an interest in historical
events and researchers looking up facts, dates, figures, etc pertaining to the
Mahoning Valley.

All the Vindy would need to make this happen would be an over-size page
scanner and a few college kids to donate some time as interns, to scan the
images and them put them into a web-based database.

[Towntalk]

Back when I was working, on Sundays on my way home I'd stop at a news stand and buy the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Plain Dealer, and while Mother was working the crosswords, I'd curl up with hot chocolate and pour over those papers, leaving only the sports sections unread.

Today, 100% of the news I read comes from the same papers on line, even the comics.

Its sad that these papers are on hard times because the web sites only have 1/10th the amount of news that the print editions contain, and even these are abbreviated stories.

Granted people today simply don't have the time to spend on newspapers, and would rather get their news via the internet, but stop and think for a moment ... how much time is spend searching out news stories on the internet as opposed to sitting down with a newspaper?

We have become a people obsessed with soundbite news, If a story is more than a half dozen short paragraphs it's too long.

I got my love for reading newspapers from one of my English teachers who required us to not only read the editorial page of the Sunday Vindicator, but we were required to bring the page to class Monday mornings prepared to discuss what we read.

[Elmo-Ytown]

I would shed a few, I love reading the newspaper! Sitting down in a comfortable chair with a hot cup of jo and reading the paper is much better than staring at a screen at your desk.

[Towntalk]

Are we witnessing the demise of the newspaper industry?

More and more American newspapers are in a world of hurt.

http://reporters.notebook.angelfire.com/reporters-notebook/

This was predicted when CNN was born, and this was also predicted when folks under 50 turned to the internet for their news, so I doubt that many here would shed any tears if newspapers in general were to stop publishing, but what would be the effect on those who do not have or use computers?