Archiving news is how we curate history. Each individual newsroom try to hold all their stories within a volt or a memory chip to preserve all these tiny documents of history.
Everything is a click away. From who ruled Egypt to an audience poll in Finland, you have access to a whole slew of things today. We have access to information like never before. From books, we’ve now moved onto online documents that could hold a million pages worth of information. But where does archiving come in?
The cloud stores all data. Why? So that every search result can land somewhere. This could be for a bunch of reasons - you need to refer to a historic event, you need to write an essay, to observe patterns, to compare numbers, etc.
The reason newspaper articles are stored is because they act as proof of the event in that particular time. This could be used in legal proceedings, to check facts, to understand stories better, to see how we got here, and even to observe advancements.
Archiving online news or digital records is of essence. If done right, this can help you look back and find just what you’re looking for. Here a few things you need to look into -
Digitization
Content would have to be digitized. As a publisher, you may have content that exists both in print and online. Sometimes the content remains the same but if it isn’t, it would be most beneficial to convert your content into a digital format. This can be done easily through scanning and converting images to text - it might take some time but it is more dependable than stacking newspapers together.
Indexing
Any good archiving requires extensive thought and effort into indexing. Storing content away will do no good if you can’t go back to it and access information quickly. This is especially true with publishers. If you’re a digital publisher then you need to form categories that help you club similar articles. Having more labels would also help narrow down your search. Focus on image numbers, keywords, dates, names and more. Index your content for the future you who has forgotten all about this story.
Create libraries
Content today is unbinding of space or ink. It can run on for pages or rather, scrolls. It is important that you maintain not one big record but rather several smaller records. If you have several smaller websites that are offshoots of your core website, this would be most beneficial as you can always add a layer of filter. It’s important to have the right sections and ensure uniformity in indexing as it would facilitate better search.
Advance search
Advanced search would help find text highlights, crop, zoom, share snippets from your content. This helps a new journalist, a reader and even a researcher to find relevant bits of information. One could also look for a collection of stories around a theme with advanced search.
Smaller newsrooms can have trouble with archiving content. If you’re switching from print to digital, the migration could take a while. However, this is where Quintype steps in. We’ve helped many publishers go digital and helped them carry their native content onto their new and improved platform without any loss of essence. Migration process is complex and takes a lot of time usually, this can be overwhelming for publishers, which is why our team ensures that while you don’t have to take the heavy load, you’re also not kept out of the whole scene.
Switching content management platforms can appear challenging, which is why we ensure that you have a smooth transition for a better publishing experience. Once all your previous content is migrated onto our platform, the content is categorized in sections and maintained in the workspace. You can also easily go back and make edits this way. The content would be kept for safekeeping in cloud storage so that you don’t have to worry about ever losing it. It’s also important to note that this would help journalists go back to the older stories much more easily without having to have a separate space to access such information.