Historic Newspapers of Washington - Functional Specs


Overview

WSL's Historic Newspapers of Washington is the repository for and online presentation of issues of historic newspapers throughout Washington State.

Purpose

Historic Newspapers in Washington will serve as the integrated search and browse interface for digital issues of Washington Pioneer Newspapers (volunteer indexed pre-statehood newspapers) and the full-text searchable newspapers (OCRd text, issues published before 1923) digitized as part of the NDNP grants.

Newspapers are one of the most requested and viewed materials at the Washington State Library and the Historic Newspapers of Washington are the most heavily used digital collection the library offers. The Washington State Library spends a large amount of money on the digitization of newspapers (both general and grant funds). While the current system has performed well for the x amount of indexed newspaper images there have been known search issues in the current system (e.g. default Boolean set to 'OR' rather than 'AND') and we've heard from various researchers that access to the newspapers can be difficult if a special viewer or plugin is required. We are also concerned about the impact a sudden amount of non-indexed, yet full-text searchable images could have on the system.

Due to the visibility and use of this digital collection, the money spent to create and maintain it, and the increase of new issues from the NDNP grant, we are aiming to make changes to this online collection that will allow researchers to better refine searches and discovery

Scope

The scope of the proposed changes cover:
  1. modeling database to integrate two different types of newspaper content (indexed, article-level data; and full text, page-level data)
  2. provide easier viewing options of images
  3. explore options to refine and filter results
  4. explore viability of more advanced search options
  5. add new way finding tools for searchers (context to search results, breadcrumbs, etc.)
  6. explore new or different data structures that allow extensiblity and future content types

These changes do not cover:
  1. Increasing content management options of WSL staff (e.g. uploading of new images and ability to fix and re-index data).
  2. Implementing integration of other digital collections (maps, books, etc.)

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