Televisual: D.C. Thomson

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Read how Televisual's customers use Asset to lower their cost of content ownership.

D.C. Thomson

D.C. Thomson, based in Dundee, Scotland, was the first customer for The Library Solution, the archiving system introduced by Televisual in 1994. D.C. Thomson publishes morning and evening newspapers, called The Courier and The Telegraph respectively. It also publishes a Sunday newspaper, The Sunday Post, from its Glasgow office.

In January 1995, Televisual installed version one of The Library Solution in the D.C. Thomson in Dundee. It was based on a Sun Solaris SPARCstation 10, accessed by client PC’s and Macintoshes. The Library Solution was linked to the existing ATEX J11 editorial system from which it took all published text automatically. The library staff performed quality control in the text using Object Manager, The Library Solution editor prior to indexing.

In May 1995, D.C. Thomson started to index pictures into The Library Solution. Initially only published pictures were added, with each linked to the story it accompanied. As the database grew, high resolution pictures were migrated to CD ROM, with the low resolution versions preserved on the server.

In May 1997 Televisual introduced version 2 of The Library Solution, which was NT based, using web browser clients. D.C. Thomson upgraded to this system, installing a twin processor Pentium Pro 200 server to host the software. This was followed by the introduction of Hot Picture, the Televisual web browser based picture desk. This allowed both selection of live pictures from The Press Association and other agencies for publication, and archiving of wire pictures.

1998 saw the replacement of the aging ATEX J11 editorial system with its successor, the ATEX Prestige system. This was also configured to feed text automatically to The Library Solution, leaving the workflow virtually unchanged, but with a reduction in the level of quality control required as the text feed from the more modern editorial system was much cleaner.

In May 1998, Hot Picture was also installed in the Glasgow office where The Sunday Post is produced, using the company wide are network to link this to The Library Solution archive.

In October 1998, D.C. Thomson took its first steps into text syndication, using Dispatch Processor to feed all text to which it owned the copyright automatically to the Televisual iSearch on-line archive of Scottish newspapers. Dispatch Processor has subsequently been used for a range of syndication tasks for both text and images.

The archive grew steadily, and disk storage on the server was tripled in July 1999. Even with this, the number of CD's grew steadily, and the introduction of digital cameras in February 2000 heralded the need to have all high resolution pictures on-line. In December 2000, D.C. Thomson installed an HP LH6000 server as the primary library server, and "retired" the existing server to host a 480 slot Plasmon DVD RAM Jukebox, and to act as a live backup to the main server. The 480 slot jukebox provides over a terabyte of usable storage, which is sufficient for over 3 million pictures at publication quality. The Library Solution software was upgraded to Asset, its successor product which improves the level of automation achieved in the archiving process, and adds a range of new features for web publishing.

From its initial introduction as an post production system to preserve content for prosperity, The Library Solution and Asset have become an integral part of the editorial and production processes of The Courier and The Evening Telegraph. D.C. Thomson, renowned in the newspaper industry worldwide as an early adopter of new technology has proven the benefits of electronic archiving from both editorial and a cost benefit standpoints, and is continuing to deploy the Asset product range as it evolves as a content management system for newspapers.

Last Updated: Monday 29 May 2006 - 11:22

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