Goals

The goal of this project is to produce a digital archive of the Socialist Standard which includes all issues from 1904 to the present, and which will be made available on DVD-ROM and online. The archive will include a user-friendly interface for finding and viewing the issues, and should be accessible with any modern computer.

In practice, this means that the issues will be provided in an accessible document archive format, such as PDF or DjVu. Older issues will need to be scanned and OCR'd. The interface will most likely take the form of a set of HTML pages viewed with a web browser, as this is the easiest way to ensure cross-platform compatibility. The index will list the issues by date and cover image. Ideally there will also be an index of article titles, authors, and subjects, and also a searchable full-text index.

Some of the goals, such as full-text searching, may not be achievable in the short term, so I plan to create various editions of the archive. The first edition may include just the non-OCR'd issues and a simple index; later editions can add other features as work on them is completed.