He knows better than most the burdensome labour that can go into searching newspaper microfilm.
Researchers often only have a vague notion of a date, like the mid-1950s, for something as simple as a death notice. So you look, and look, and look, mechanically loading one roll after another, always worried that, in a bleary-eyed state, you might skip right over the piece. Hours, even days, can be consumed.
“If you’re doing this manually, does ‘needle in a haystack’ mean anything to you? It’s an arduous process.”
Silcoff has not only been using the online Citizen archives every day for about three weeks, but he’s been training the regular Ottawa Room researchers — and other librarians — on how to use the new tool.
A word of caution. The digital archive has unexplained time gaps and the optical search results are patchy. Often obvious stories are completely missed. Still, it is a huge advance.
The article goes on to mention that other major Canwest daily newspapers are also being digitized by Google and should be completed later this year.
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