18 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020 www.charlestonco.com
ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Calgary Herald Newspaper Archive Date of Review: September 5, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.18
Composite Score: HHHHH Reviewed by: Jane C. Duffy MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Abstract The Calgary Herald Archive is a primary resource that makes accessible the full text of this newspaper from its founding in 1883 through to 2010. Freely accessible to residents of the province of Alberta, the CHA is their oldest available news resource. The CHA was produced in collaboration with several Albertan public and academic libraries. These institutions digitized the full text content for ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers. Capturing unique historical, political, social, and regional information about Alberta’s largest city, the CHA is a highly specialized resource for Western Canadian researchers.
Pricing Options The Calgary Herald Archive is accessible free of charge to all residents of the province of Alberta. Access is provided through The Alberta Library, the province’s consortium, in partnership with ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers. For those educational and public institutions, external to Alberta, who wish to purchase access to the CHA, details about subscription options are not publicly available. By contacting <sales@proquest.com>, external users are provided with pricing numbers for academic libraries based upon factors such as enrollment numbers, and for public library systems based on factors such as their catchment numbers.
Product Overview/Description The intended audiences for this database are all citizens of Western Canada as well as researchers in Alberta’s social, political and cultural history. One of ProQuest’s Historical Newspaper’s suite of standalone titles, the Calgary Herald Archive is a special collaboration between ProQuest and libraries, both academic and public, in the province of Alberta, Canada. The entire contents of the Calgary Herald’s publishing from 1883-2010 were digitized and organized by the province’s library professionals, and then made accessible and searchable through ProQuest’s interface, storage, and information control designs. Each number of the CHA are offered in full-page as well as article images in PDF format. Users require Adobe reader to access this format. In addition to the Calgary Herald’s articles, researchers may access photos, classified advertisements, editorial cartoons, obituaries, and other auxiliary content are downloadable. All content is both browsable and searchable through a linked suite of access points, including free text. As a ProQuest partnership, the Calgary Herald Archive search experience is similar to that afforded by other ProQuest products. Some rich media content is available through the archive; therefore, the researcher is advised to keep JavaScript enabled throughout the search session. Animated features and video require the FlashPlayer plug-in and one of the following video player software: Windows Media Player, QuickTime, RealPlay-
<duffyj@macewan.ca>
er. Graphics, such as illustrations and photographs that are part of the original text include captions and are enlargeable by clicking on it. The Calgary Herald Archive is fully indexed with links to limited fulltext by the Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA) database.
User Interface/Navigation/Searching The CHA interface is familiar to all ProQuest Historical Newspaper subscribers. In addition to traditional access points such as subject, key word, article title, author, date, wildcards and truncation, etc., the CHA offers advanced search aids such as field codes, source type, document type, and language. Of special interest to Indigenous researchers is the ability to limit searches to documents that contain words in those languages. Mnemonics are offered for specialist searches. The combination mnemonic, such as the TISU mnemonic which searches specifically title and subject fields, are shortcuts to mining particular fields. Applied to the terms “women” and “stampede,” the TISU mnemonic instantly yields access to articles and supplementary materials that predominantly feature these topics. ProQuest mnemonics are a time-saving feature for CHA users, especially academics. Navigation is quite simple as the interface is designed to highlight, and draw the researcher’s attention to, salient points of access and storage features with minimal scrolling, usually on one screen (see Figures 1 and 2). The Calgary Herald Archive is aligned with the ProQuest standard of product accessibility: There are site links at the top of each page of the CHA’s search results. Additionally, there are commands that assist with navigation, permitting users to by-pass site-wide links to go straight to content, if desired. TAB key and Accesskey8 can focus, frame, and direct users’ search experience as well. Changing the visual display as well as text, ProQuest background, and link color combinations are also very simple to adjust should the user wish to change or over-ride them. These accessibility features are compatible with all browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. The CHA is fully ADA-compliant and meets the most recent versions of WCAG.
Critical Evaluation The CHA is a highly specialized standalone database that will be of interest almost exclusively to those who are already familiar with Albertan and other Western Canadian history. As such, its search experience is not particularly complex nor is it difficult to navigate. The stream-lined quality of the search page advances the researcher’s ability to find precise and relevant information with a minimum of scrolling or flipping back and forth from link to link. The ability to limit searches to those containing words in different languages supports new and emerging streams of research in native culture, de-colonialization and reconciliation studies, as well as other streams of In-
