News: Online Archives

We would like to know how we can create a category like CNN found in News > Online Archives. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has an award wining in-depth archives site (http://archives.cbc.ca/) that contains videos and audio clips spanning over 7 decades. We would like to have a category - like CNN - that we can list our archived content by topic or date.

I couldn't find the editor the Online Archives category that is why I am here. Any help would be much appreciated.

thanks

What you're asking for, I think, is what we call "PCP", "preferred content provider" status. ODP administration would have to consider that.

But it doesn't look to me, on the surface, like a totally unreasonable request. I'll pass it on.

We also have a "recommended site" program, which includes such sites as Project Gutenberg and the BBC -- known provider of good deeplinks. Perhaps you could pick two or three deeplinks and suggest (in this forum) what topics you'd post them in. We could give a pre-review idea of whether those are reasonable deeplinks.

CNN is part of AOL/TW right? That may be the difference, but it certainly can't hurt to ask.

I personally would like to see most all of NPR's stuff get listed. Perhaps I can mention that when the time seems right.

I don't think the AOL/TW connection is relevant.

But in the early days, when we were desperate for PCP's, the directory was rather California-centric -- and understandably so. (You have to start somewhere, even if you just want to end up in Tennessee as quickly as possible.) Foreign news sources -- like, say, African tribal religions or French-language websites -- were overlooked at first.

Thanks for the info, what we would like to do is to take our topic index (http://archives.cbc.ca/topic_index) and have it as a directory. We have a link to the our archives from the Online Archives page, but we would like to have our own section within the Online Archives where we deeplink to the content and organize it by topic. Similar to what CNN has but instead of linking to individual articles we would link to our archived mini-sites and in-depth sections.

For example:

News > Online Archives > CBC Archives

People
Conflict and War
Arts and Entertainment
Politics and Economy
Life and Society
Disasters and Tragedies
Science and Technology
Sports

Seriously, I don't personally think that an Archive category would be the best use of most of the CBC archives. I could absolutely see linking to the topics in relevent areas (e.g. the Halifax Explosion archive is listed in Regional/North_America/Canada/Nova_Scotia/Localities/H/Halifax/Society_and_Culture/History where it is pertinent).

I feel that our archives would be perfect for the Online Archives section. The content we have is archived TV and Radio content made available on the internet. Our content is more suited for the category then CNN which just submits every article they have posted. How is single article about how safe it is to hail a cab in mexico more suited for the Online Archives then our 'archived' radio and tv clips of D-Day?

As has already been noted, CNN was a special situation early on in the life of the directory. I'm not saying you won't be granted similar status; I'm just saying I personally hope you won't as I think us having Archive categories for a ton of articles from specific news sources is redundant. On the other hand, I fully believe that the various CBC archives (and any other relevent news archives elsewhere) should be listed in the relevant topic categories.

Out of curiousity, why would you want to have all of the nifty CBC archives lumped together in a pretty meaningless dated structure like CNN rather than listed under the appropriate topic? I mean, why would having the D-Day archive listed in something like News/Online_Archives/CBC/someyear/somemonth/Conflicts (where the year and month is date the archive was created, not the period covered) be better than listing in the more relevant WW II category? I'm seeing a "CNN has it so we should, too" thing here when really the CNN category is nothing to envy or emulate.

Its not really an envy thing - like we want what CNN has (There're many other things the CBC would rather have then a section in DMOZ - like a hockey season ). We just think that our archived content would be well suited for for the online archives section. We wouldn't break it down by year as you mentioned but by topic ie CBC Archives>Conflicts would have D-day and such.

I guess it really comes down to is should it be very granular and put in the content in the specific spot or have it together by the type of content it is. Our content is not really full sites dedicated to a specific topic but a small collection of archived clips for each topic.

Thanks for all your help and input

"Small collections of unique archived clips" would, IMO, make a SPLENDID addition to most historical topics.

>> "Small collections of unique archived clips" would, IMO, make a SPLENDID addition to most historical topics.

Absolutely agree with that.