Old Ottawa South

Digitization of Archival OSCAR

Integration of OSCAR and the Website

OSCAR offers an almost continuous view of OOS since 1973. I believe that it would be the most useful for our citizens if the full text of OSCAR for that period could be offered online in an easily searchable form.

The Ottawa Public Library has an interest in digitizing their collection of community newspapers AND they have over $200,000 to get started on doing it. OSCA has it's foot in the OPL's door through the efforts of myself and Sue Potter. The digitization of OSCAR could easily be their pilot project.

I'd like continue on with the OPL, as OSCA's official representative, reporting to the OSCA President. My purpose would be to aid the OPL in making OSCAR their pilot project while doing it in such a way that we get a full-text database from it.

I suggest that what OSCA should get, in return for it's (my) help and release of copyright to OPL, would be a copy of the full scanned image set, database and interface code as developed for the OPL's use. OPL hasn’t yet decided any of the details of what they will do so it’s hard to say exactly what form their digital OSCAR would take. My intent would be to make sure that it is a form that would also be useful to OSCA on the website.

Should the OPL back off of the project I’d like to suggest creating a full text database of the last ten years of OSCAR using the word processor files that Peter Hecht kept. I would be willing to organize that effort.

I haven’t been able to see the collection yet but I’m guessing that there are between 1500 and 2000 files involved and that they could be put into a database with 100 to 150 hours of work plus eight or ten hours of programming to present the database through the website. We would have to find funding for that effort.

Finally, concerning digital OSCAR, you’ll note that I haven’t mentioned Online OSCAR, as it has been offered since November, 1999. The files exist and are available via the new site. If we were creating a database, as suggested above, I would propose replacing the existing files with an access-by-issue interface to the database, consisting of a table of contents and sufficient formatting to provide good looking articles. At that point we could cease doing the Online OSCAR and simply insert all articles into the database, as the new OSCARs are built.

The website is a news medium of immediacy and little editorial effort and OSCAR a medium of more thoughtful and contemplative content with extensive editorial effort.

Any news items that come to OSCAR that don’t fit its monthly publishing schedule could be put on the website through the News interface. The OSCAR editor could be the Content Manager of that area.

OSCAR’s Classy Ads and Community Bulletin Board content fit very well with the Events module that we have built for the website. The Classy Ads are different enough that a new module would have to be enabled but it would be very similar to the Events module and would reuse Events code.

If that programming were done, the OSCAR Editor could become the Content Manager of those website areas and could use them as a repository for that content as it comes to her. Now, add a function that would allow her to dump all current entries to an e-mail (to her) and she would have a database solution to managing the Classy Ads and Community Bulletin Board content for Print OSCAR.

Notes on Integration

1. Classy ads and Community Bulletin Board items might be accepted through a website interface and that fact advertised in OSCAR along with the traditional methods of getting them to OSCAR.
2. Classy ads and Community Bulletin Board items could be reflected to the website by the OSCAR editor as soon they are received.
3. At press time, all current items could be dumped to e-mail for inclusion in Print OSCAR.
4. Some few Classy ads are very time-sensitive and would be most usefully done on the website only(lost items, pets)
5. Classy Ads Online would have to require classification of the ad by the author in a restricted vocabulary corresponding to OSCAR classification.

My vision is that the website will be most interesting and useful if:

1. It is built to maximize members’ interaction and ownership of the content
2. The website uses technology that allows the creation of links and content by members to create depth in the content.

I suggest that Archival OSCAR and Online OSCAR, as its content is added to the website, could be open for website member commentary and addition. This would be a significant programming effort.

If enhancement technology were developed, there would also be the oportunity for Online OSCAR to contain more than it was possible to include (because of space) in the Print OSCAR. In particular, more picture and colour versions of pictures could be included.