[CQ-Contest] FYI: CQ, Buckmaster, Introduce Searchable Online CQ Archive

[Jim Reisert AD1C]

Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 17:35:14 -0400
To: cq-l at sunserver.com
From: CQ.Communications at unix2.sunserver.com
Subject: [cq-l] News: CQ, Buckmaster, Introduce Searchable Online CQ Archive
Reply-to: w2vu at cq-amateur-radio.com

News from CQ....

CQ, Buckmaster Introduce Searchable Online CQ Magazine Archive

(Hicksville, NY / Mineral, VA, June 15, 2004) - CQ Communications, Inc. of 
Hicksville, New York, publisher of CQ Amateur Radio magazine, and 
Buckmaster Publishing of Mineral, Virginia, jointly announce plans to 
create a searchable online archive of CQ magazine back issues, eventually 
dating back to the magazine's first issue in January 1945. A beta test 
version covering 1990-2002 is already online.

Buckmaster, which produces the "Hamcall" CD and website, and has for 
decades filmed back issues of CQ onto microfiche for use by researchers and 
hobbyists alike, currently uses advanced scanning and searching technology 
for online posting of documents for major corporations. This technology 
will be applied to back issues of CQ, under an agreement announced today by 
CQ Publisher Dick Ross, K2MGA, and Buckmaster President Jack Speer, N1BIC. 
As currently envisioned, searches will be free, while access to reading and 
printing specific pages will require a subscription at a nominal fee.

"In addition to very high quality scans of each page of each issue," said 
Speer, "we use optical character recognition (OCR) to automatically index 
each word in each article. Our search engine, which is too complex to be 
included on a CD-ROM, will identify each article containing the search 
term(s). The indexing of every word eliminates the restriction of most 
indexes and search engines that are limited to looking for key words that 
have been manually assigned or indexed."

Speaking for CQ, Ross said, "Our readers have been asking us for several 
years about putting back issues of CQ onto CD-ROMs, but frankly, we have 
been unhappy with the limitations of the search engines that we're able to 
put onto a CD. If the indexer hasn't chosen to include the word you're 
looking for in the index, then you're out of luck."

"This system allows our readers to have access to a much more powerful 
search engine than we could provide on a CD," Ross continued, "plus they 
don't have to purchase entire CD sets of multiple back issues in order to 
get access to one or two articles. This system will allow readers to pay 
only for what they want, then download the article using their browser to 
view or print at home. We believe this will provide our readers with a 
better archive service at a lower cost than creating back-issue CDs or 
arranging many feet of shelving for housing printed copies of the magazine."

Speer says he plans to bring the CQ back issues online in 10-year blocks, 
beginning with 2004-1990, which he expects to be available immediately.
Initial subscription pricing is as follows:
* Searching and access to the first five pages of each issue: Free
* 1 month: $10
* 3 months: $15
* 6 months: $25
* 12 months: $45
* Lifetime: $500
Views are limited to 100 pages per day, and the 24 most recent issues are 
available only to CQ staff.

The archive may be accessed at: http://hamcall.net/cgi-bin/cqcgi.

CQ Communications, Inc. publishes CQ Amateur Radio, CQ RadioAmateur 
(Spanish CQ), CQ VHF and Popular Communications magazines, plus the CQ 
Library of books, videos and CDs. It is headquartered in Hicksville, New York.

Buckmaster Publishing is a leading archiving and retrieval service based in 
Mineral, Virginia. In the amateur radio world, it is best-known for 
archiving all major ham magazines onto microfiche, and as the publisher of 
the "Hamcall" amateur radio international callsign lookup CD and web site.

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