Digital Archives Make Massive Content Available
When I first published this article, I noted that there is a massive movement in content acquisition and management. Old uncopywrited materials are being scanned and placed into digital media. In some cases they are being opened up to the public.
Here is a nice story on NPR that brings a piece of this movement into perspective.
I ran into this movement while working with the MetaArchive Cooperative. It is a developing trend I am continuing to explore. As of yet, I do not see social media being worked into these efforts beyond the use of 'captcha' to get people to do the translation and OCR work. Over time, I expect the highest value from these items will be derived through connectivity concerning the texts -> contextual repositories of associations and meaning that emerge over time.
Here are a few more articles about Google's efforts, especially how they are not building these archives directly into their search interfaces.
- MSNBC: Google's newspaper archives go way, way back Online library will include billions of articles published during past 244 years
- New York Times: Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives
- CNET: Google raising newspaper morgues from the dead
To illustrate the scope of the conversion of old archives, you can also view this video:
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