The Universal Publication Archive

presented by Rande SimpsonMerlinOne, Inc.

MerlinOne: backgrounder

Founded in 1988, MIT engineering & AP news photo heritage — Evolved from satellite image transmission to image archives in 1993

— Remained experts in news content gathering and distribution applications

— Private, profitable, growing

Mature, feature-rich products— Merlin in 4.2 release

— Largest DBs in our markets: millions and millions of objects with thousands of users

MerlinOne: users and applications

Newspapers, Magazines— New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Time-Life Archives, Time

Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star

Electronic publishing— Corbis, MSNBC, Bloomberg, Landov Photos,

Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive

Corporate & institutional publishing— Executive Office of the President (White House),

Pfizer, Marvel Comics, Harvard University, Habitat For Humanity, World Vision

The Universal Publishing Archive

Publishing archives to date....

Unique workflows for text, photo, line art, pages...

Evolved into separate archives for text, photos, art, pages...

Digital Archives

Initial Digital Archives automated existing analog workflows

80-90s vintage computing & storage added other constrains

Resulted in Individual systems for texts, photos, advertising...

Individual department focus

Today’s computing environment removes tech barriers

Desktop publishing unifies text, photo, ad, pagination workflows into integrated digital process

Cheap storage, CPUs, big displays

Widespread access to the networks, the web, e-mail

Most of the 1980-90s technical restrictions eliminated

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Today’s business environment changes archive needs

Newspapers change— More pictures, color, ads, sections, zones, niche titles

— Newspaper web site, web-specific content

— Departmental organizations evolve, importance of IT

— More freelancing = more rights issues

Publishers change— More and bigger chains

— Combination with broadcast

— Greater demand for content to feed new channels

— Even greater requirements for efficiency and to do more with less

So what would you want in an archive TODAY?

Publishers have been asking about:

One place for all content created at the paper (non-print too)

One point to access and share content internally

One point to share content across the chain

One place to find company content as source to repackage and generate new revenue

A Universal publishing archive

What is a Universal Archive?

What to archive for the newspaper?

All production PDF pages

— Represents “digital publication master” of what was actually printed

— Full resolution: to allow highest quality reproduction later

— “Real PDF” retains text & internal structures

All related source content used to create page

— Photos, text, graphics in their source file formats

— In source resolution (often higher than page)

— Unretouched, uncropped images (page or history shows that)

What else to archive?

Related content that helps reuse and adds value

— Related photo outtakes

— Unique web content too: HTML, Flash, MP3..

— “Card catalogue” records of physical content (video, objects, film) with thumbnail, video/sound clip previews

— Ad files too, as art and for ad pickup/reruns

— Production formats (to make changes easier)

— Keep fonts (needed by production apps to recreate older pages)

Capture & input content at the source

Interfaces with editorial & production systems automates capture of key metadata

— Publication/section/page/zone, Content ID#, page location

Extract metadata using industry standards-XML, XMP

Link content to assignment, rights, freelancer & agency DB

Links content objects to pages

Universal Archive

Enhance Content

Must be easier as more content is stored with tools like:

Type-aheads

Stored text strings

Easy linking of various object types

Search and replace

Auto-keywording

Joining stories

Search and find everything

Linked pages

Run search

Find page

Displays contents

Click to see source objects of text, graphics, photos

Download for use

Multi-view

Flexible views that end-users can modify

Sharing

Peer to peer, across systems

City 1

City 2

City 3 Central System

Local access

System scaling

Support large system, millions of objects, thousands of users

Fault tolerant configurations

Streamline systems to minimize IT impact

Webmaster ServerMerlin Client ServerMerlin Input/OutputMerlin Server SQL ServerFile Server

Webmaster ServerMerlin Client Server

Merlin Input/OutputMerlin Server SQL Server

File Server (can be MS2k or Unix)

Automated distribution

Must be able to setup exports

— Online resale vendors

— Web versions

— Automatic delivery through e-mail

— Redistill PDFs for Electronic Tearsheets

— Other resale and revenue outlets

In practice

Tampa Tribune (convergence)

Tribune Publishing (content sharing)

Storing “everything”

— Traditional image archives adding text

— Many sites now store text, photos, graphics, PDF pages

— CCI sites automating linking of all publication content

Who needs a Universal Archive?

Everyone

Thank You

Rande Simpson

MerlinOne, Inc