CAR: Are We Being Left in the Dust?

Handout

Griff Palmer (officially Database Editor; unofficially CAR guru) at The Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, graciously agreed to share his thoughts on CAR and news libraries with the SLA News Division.

As computer-assisted reporting and research become more widely accepted in journalism, new questions arise about the relationship between news libraries and newsrooms.

New technology has brought with it new flexibility and new possibilities. In my opinion, it is critical for news library managers, newsroom managers and technology managers to communicate closely and coordinate carefully as they adapt to the rapid evolution of information technology.

Without careful planning, new relationships and new practices evolve in an ad hoc fashion that may or may not best meet a newspaper's needs or best exploit the potential of computer-assisted reporting and research.

The decentralization attendant to desktop computing has been one of the major forces that have called news libraries' role into question.

News libraries have long served as central repositories of research materials -- clipping morgues, reference materials, periodicals, etc.; and of research skills. In the first wave of computerization, as morgues evolved into full-text databases, the data remained centralized on mainframe and minicomputer systems.

In the last half-decade, however, information technology has exploded into a complex, sprawling, worldwide matrix. No longer are traditional information sources confined to news libraries, university libraries and public libraries; and no longer are the tools for retrieving this information concentrated in the hands of news librarians.

At The Daily Oklahoman, as at many other newspapers, every reporter is now equipped to navigate the matrix -- to dial up government bulletin board systems, full-text database services or the Internet; and to access in-house databases.

Even though every desktop is a fully equipped research station, most reporters continue to rely almost solely on the library staff to conduct their on-line research for them. This tendency is reinforced by the fact that development of research tools on newsroom desktops has been poorly planned. No thought was given to decent user interfaces, or to providing the kind of processing power necessary to handle reporter-driven computer research.

From my conversations with colleagues throughout the country, it appears that many other newspapers are in the same situation. In the next few years, many newspapers are going to be investing in new newsroom computer systems.

Those newspapers that invest well and plan well will integrate their myriad technology needs: formatting and routing of newsroom copy for print production, on-line production and full-text database archiving; construction of platforms that allow smooth flow of digital images between art departments, newsrooms and on-line archives; development of dial-up and network-based information retrieval tools; and development of tools for acquiring, formatting, storing and analyzing government records in electronic formats.

I shudder to think what the future holds for those newspapers that do a poor job of integrating.

News librarians are becoming responsible for increasingly sophisticated digital archiving systems. At the same time, often outside their purview, newsrooms are amassing ever larger and more complex repositories of government data.

In my opinion, planning for the cataloging and archiving of this data is one of the crucial areas where news libraries and newsrooms need to communicate and coordinate. If news librarians can make available their resources and expertise for archiving this data, while affording newsrooms flexible access to the storage space and processing power necessary to use the data autonomously, newspapers will profit from the bargain.

It is crucial for library managers and newsroom managers to understand each other's needs, and to articulate those needs clearly to technology managers and upper management.

News library managers and newsroom managers must also have a clear consensus on the degree of autonomy expected of reporters in carrying out computer-assisted research. Some newspapers may be more comfortable with operations in which news librarians conduct the bulk of the newsroom's on-line research.

Some newspapers are staffing their libraries with people experienced in analysis of government data, and are teaming their libraries' reporting staff with their newsroom staff.

Because computer technology is so flexible, there is no single approach that is necessarily more valid than any other.

What is critical is a shared understanding among library, newsroom and upper management on the role each is to play in implementing and carrying out computer-assisted reporting and research.

(Carol Campbell, The Daily Oklahoman e-mail carolc@oklahoman.net; Griff Palmer's e-mail palmer@qns.com)


1996 News Division Program for the SLA Annual Conference
SLA News Division Home

Reformatted on 03/23/03
Jessica Baumgart
newsdivisionweb@yahoo.com