Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Paper and The Times Soon Online!

As part of the neighborhood Centennial The Times of Skinker DeBaliviere, formerly known as The Paper, is being scanned and made available to anyone on the Times' website. The 1970's and 80's have been completed and made into PDF's which will be available soon. We had anticipated that the whole job could be completed for approximately $7000, but we discovered that there were actually about 700 more pages than we estimated. We have to find a financial solution to the problem of scanning the 1990's and the first three years of the new millenium. Since 2003, The Times has been prepared and sent to the printer in PDF form, so no scanning of issues after that time will be required.
We are also trying to index the content of those issues so that users can find items of interest to them more easily. Because of the enormity of this task, we will probably limit this index to the titles of stories and their bylines, a brief description of the photos with their photo credits and captions, especially as they may show local residents, and ad listings.
Ideally, we could build a name index so that we could readily identify all stories and photos in which that name appeared, but that will take more workers than we currently have.
As soon as we have these issues available online, we would appreciate the help of volunteers who would like to take on some issues in order to build that index.
If you should be inclined to look back over the last nearly 40 years of life in this neighborhood, you will enjoy looking at the 1970's and 80's. I was surprised how much I had forgotten, and how much fun it was to be reminded.
When we find the money, we'll provide the 1990's and early 2000's. If you would like to contribute to this effort, please do not hesitate to contact Marj Weir or JoAnn Vatcha.