When it comes to archiving, newspapers are getting a lot more creative these days than just storing the past several years of their print product.

The Globe and Mail of Toronto, for example, late last year launched Canada’s Heritage from 1844, a collection of stories, images and other historical information that originally appeared in past issues of the daily.

“The Globe and Mail has a long history of archiving and repurposing the archive in different ways,” said Marilyn Hertz, manager of syndication for the newspaper. “We were actually the first newspaper to go online and in print the same day, so we have a very rich history of doing innovative things with content.”

Canada’s Heritage, a sort of historical database, was created with the help of software developer Cold North Wind Inc. and provides users with complete pages of The Globe and Mail, in their original context. Pages dating back to 1844 can be viewed complete with advertisements and other graphics.

“[Cold North Wind] and I started talking probably about two years ago,” Hertz said. “I felt the market wasn’t quite ready yet and we just held back until the time was more ripe and we thought there would be a better acceptance in the marketplace.”

Libraries key customers

The “marketplace” or clientele for this particular product is comprised of public libraries, society libraries, school libraries and genealogy societies. Hertz said the newspaper does plan to market Canada’s Heritage to individuals by the end of the year or in early 2004. She said the timing is right for this type of product.

“Microfilm certainly has its place as a preservation type of product, but people are just becoming more sophisticated and microfilm readers aren’t the easiest thing in the world to manipulate,” she said. “People are asking for better products to search historical databases.”

The Globe and Mail also offers an electronic database that dates back to 1977, which is sold through Factiva.com.

To ensure that documents available via Canada’s Heritage don’t compete with its commercial Factiva.com offering, The Globe and Mail purposely keeps Heritage files less current.

“It isn’t current, there is a time lag,” Hertz explained. “We obviously don’t want to compete with different products and cannibalize ourselves.”

Search capabilities also differ between the two offerings. Canada’s Heritage users receive entire pages as single entities, while Factiva users receive specific articles in response to their request.

“The beauty of a product like this is that it really puts history in its context versus just pulling out the textual article itself,” Hertz said.

Subscriptions to Canada’s Heritage are licensed through Micromedia ProQuest, a Canadian subsidiary of ProQuest.

Finding Canada’s Heritage

At this point, individuals can access Canada’s Heritage, but only through libraries and partner institutions. A sample of the information is available through Micromedia ProQuest’s Web site at www.mmltd.com.

Hertz said the data available through Canada’s Heritage is appropriate for anyone wanting historical, contextual information.

“You wouldn’t be using this for quick-making business decisions,” she said. “This is more of an historical product.”

Cold Wind has worked with other newspapers such as The Toronto Star and The New York Times to develop similar historical products.

“It really is a neat product,” said Hertz. “It’s very rich and you can get lost in it for hours and just keep going and going because you can’t believe the stuff you’re reading.”