The Hong Kong Chinese University Document Retrieval Database——The Hong Kong Newspaper Full-text Database Projeet

This project is to collect, organize, index and store full-text and graphics of selected Chinese and English newspapers currently published in Hang Kong. The end product will be an electronic database available to researchers through local area network, Internet and dial-up users. New items of the day before and up to six months will be available for online searching, via key word or subject, Earlier cumulated nateriats alone with the same indexing and searchmg software will be archived to optical media (CD ROM disks). As Itong Kong experiences rapid social, financial, conmtercial, political, educational and cultural changes, our state-of-the-art comprehensive coverage of local and regional newspapers will be a landmark contribution to information industries and researchers internationally. As the coverage of the database will be comprehensive and centralized, retrieval of news items of major Hang Kong newspapers will be fast and immtediate. Users do no need to look through daily or bi-monthly indexes in order to go to the newspapers or cuttings to obtain the hard copy, and then bring to the photocopier machine to copy,At this stage, we are hiring librarians, information specialists and support staff to work on this project. We also met and work with newspaper indexing and retrieval system developers in Beijing and Hang Kong to study cooperative systems to speed up the process. So far, we have received funding support from the Chinese University and the Hong Kong Government for two years. It is our plan to have a presentable sample database done by mid 1995, and have several newspapers indexed and stored in the structure arid for mat easy formigration to the eventual database system by the end of 1996.