A Day in the Life: Colline Roberts

This account was written for the MidAtlantic News Research Conference on July 18-19, 1997.

Colline Roberts
Archive Manager
News Research Department
The News & Observer


Text Archive - enhancing and indexing

1 full time - Archive manager
3 part-time - Monday - Friday
4 part-time - Saturday - Sunday

2 part-timers cross trained to help with photo archiving

Our day begins about 8am. First we check the automated conversion
process to see if it ran, converting Quark documents to simple text documents and
adding a header. We collate two copies of each section of the paper,
match final edition  stories with other editions, selecting longer or
different versions of stories from other editions. 

The enhancing begins - checking the electronic version with the
newspaper copy, adding information in the header fields if needed. This process
takes bout 4-5 hours.  After the enhancing is complete, reports are run,
corrections are made and the final indexing begins. This takes about an
hour.

The daily stories are usually ready for searching by 3pm each day.

We do this 7 days a week, 365 days a year, averaging 140 stories per
day.

After final indexing is complete copies of daily stories are sent to
DataTimes, Newsbank And Nexis.

We also archive the Chapel Hill News and The Cary News. Two part-timers
handle this at different times during the week. These publications
average about 40 stories each.

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Arrive 7:30am. Anxious to see if automated conversion of Quark documents
has occured, if not, will have to run manually. This process will take about
1-2 hours and I want to get started as soon as possible.

Automated conversion has run, however, we have error 11 and the process
locked. Must finish with manual conversion. Fired it off!

While this is running, check voice messages and e-mail. Nothing much
going on with this.

8am - Part time staff arrives. They get busy collating papers and
matching stories in different editions. We talk about what's in the paper and how
to handle some problem stories. 

8:30am - "I can't log-on" is the cry from one staffer. I check out Mac
and reboot. Will not reconigze his log-on. Use my log-on and I'll check with
programming later and find out what's  wrong. Also, there's message from
weekend about a story that is too long for our datatbase. Check story,
make two stories (part 1 & part 2) and re-run indexing for Saturday's
stories.

8:45 - Have some coffee and check Sunday's stories, find missing stories
(retrieve from page layouts) and enhance. Make final check of stories
and get final count. Sunday's ready for indexing.

9am - Phone call - bookkeeping can't find p.o. number for some book
orders. Track down person who made the order. We go to bookkeeping and solve
their problem. Give copies to Teresa.

9:30am - Enhancer can't find story. I check Quark file manager and
retrieve the story.

Phone again, microfilming company wants more files to microfilm. When
will I have some ready. Maybe Wednesday. I hope.

10am - Start enhancing the Metro section. One staffer short today, so I
take her place.

10:10am - call about copy of business section front page for May 13. Can
I make a copy? Yes, give me until this afternoon. 

11:30am - Enhancing finished. (Monday's have fewer stories than other
days)

11:45am - Called programming - Can they load new version of Retrospect?
(backup software) Can't do it until Wednesday. That's ok.

Talked to Peggy about photo archiving.

12 noon - Started reports for Sunday & Monday's stories. Microfiche
machine crashes. Colline can you fix it? Have to add toner and clean-up jamed
paper. Back to reports. Load stories and make corrections. Missing pub dates,
undo it all, find them and reload. Run reports again and correct other
mistakes found in these reports. While running reports and corrections call
programming again. When will my new programs for corrections be ready.
Maybe next week. Hurry!

1:15pm - Stories ready for final indexing. Start indexing on the PC and
on Mac start the backup tapes for the layouts from Friday. Quick break
before meeting at 1:30pm.

1:30pm - News Research Managers meeting with Teresa. Go over what's
going on in our dept. What plans and problems were are having. Talk about 2pm
Newsroom managers meeting and what we will discuss. The next big
newsroom meeting will be our depts. presentation. What do we want everyone to
know about us and how we will present it.

2pm - Go to managers meeting.

2:40pm - Back up stairs - check indexing and backups. Indexing is
complete, so I start indexing for 1997 so that all corrections will be in place.
Backup complete. Change tapes.  Reboot and lock keyboard. Now to 3pm
meeting with photo and text archiving vendor.

5:15pm - Presentation over and question and answer session goes on. I
excuse myself, back up stars to check 1997 indexing. Still running. This will
take about 7 or 8 hrs. I'll check it from home. Must remember to get logon
corrected for enhancer tomorrow.

5:30pm - I'm out of here!



A Day in the Life
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Last Updated: 09/16/02
Amy Disch
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