Grant-writing blues

Well, I'm slogging through another grant proposal. Actually, this is the third of four for the same project (indexing an historical local newspaper), so it is a breeze compared to the others. I'd just rather be doing my other homework or garage sale hopping! The two-year old wants to go to "sales" too! The indexing is interesting. We are doing a grant for "traditional," that is, people driven indexing. However, I want to create a database that is accessible from remote users, so that the indexing process can occur in more than one place. In addition, the controlled vocabulary for subject terminology will be created ahead of indexing, so the indexers will choose from the available terms instead of having to create them. They will be able to suggest new terms and also to directly input corporate bodies or names. Eventually we want this to be a database of several regional papers maintained by an appropriate body interested in regional history. ("We" here is the Titusville Historical Society). Yes, digitization of the paper is coming soon, but an index will help more people to find what they want for subject searches. OCR for historic fonts is much better now, but it still yields multiple false hits, even on name searches. The average person does not want to slog through large numbers of false hits. We hope to integrate new and old technology by linking digitized or scanned texts, such as obituaries, to indexed entries. Each newspaper article is indexed by subject, but listed by article title under the subject.