How can I contribute?
 

If you have magazines that are have not been scanned or indexed in AMR and you would be willing to help out by scanning or doing some indexing we'd be keen to hear from you.

Common questions about contributions are answered in the AMR FAQs.

If you would like to contribute scans please contact me first as I we have a lot of scans that are yet to be added to AMR.

If you would like to index some magazines please download the contributor excel template (also available from the link above). Please read the instructions within the file and let us know if anything needs clarification.

Missing cover
 

I'm sending this Amiga World special cover.

Larger than mirror so I pasted: is it good enough ?

I should have more somewhere ( I moved so I have things [a lot] in boxes)

Saluti (my english is low)

The FAQ doesn't say anywhere where to send the indexes and scans.

Answer is it depends - so few people have actually done anything we haven't had a need yet!

If you have scans, we usually like to check a sample before deciding. If the quality is good (ie. they are straight, complete etc) you can upload them directly to the abime.net servers and we can move them from there. If they need processing, we get them sent to us to work on and then upload.

For the indexes, email a sample to either myself or Galaxy. I will see about adding a contact us form of some kind and change the FAQ.

Instead of scanning the pages in as images, just OCR them. That way, I can just get the information, not the silly pictures.

In fact, why not just OCR all the pages and put them up on some site to download as a nice, simple archived *.txt.

I... would help to do this, but I'm busily engaged in caring for the sick, the elderly, the homeless, and those with disabilities, saint that I am.

Thankyou for your consideration of this issue.

Both seconds I considered the idea for?

I have mailed you an index. Since I have no spreadsheet program, it is in tab-delimited format.

Where do I put sample scans?

If I index a multi-format magazine, should I enter also non-Amiga reviews?

Also, should reviews of serious software and hardware be indexed?

It's up to you... games are a first priority, but feel free to index other software and hardware if you want to. What magazines do you have in mind?

Blazer: Svenska hemdatornytt as a first attempt.

For anyone considering indexing - can I just say one thing.

We will not add new magazines to AMR unless there will be a fairly useful number of entries with at least a cover scan. It's not particularly useful to see a magazine online when there were 100 issues made, click the link and find a single issue, with no scans and little information.

On the other hand, if anyone is prepared to scan the cover and do some research (how many issues were there, find out price, editor, number of pages, type in the cover and spine text) etc then we are happy to add them!

I think all reviews and previews should be OCR'd and pasted into plain text format.

This would be incredibly convenient, for all those who want the information only, not the fluff.

Imagine them all indexed, in their relevant folders, for easy perusal, much like Gamebase does with walkthroughs/instructions.

I can't believe people bother scanning in ads, contents pages and the like, and pages filled with screenshots, when most people really only want the information at the end of the day.

Sure, scan every page in if you must, but why not OCR those previews and reviews? I think it would be simply marvellous!

OneShotDead: Feel free to OCR the 25,000 scanned pages and send us the text nicely formatted.

Hi mate.

It might be useful to do from the point of view of making the articles searchable. The text would not need to be formatted, but kept in a database to link the search criteria to the article.

Yes, it's a huge task, but I thought you may have overlooked this possibility for the future when you have complete sets. Maybe there is a tool that can batch OCR the text or something.

I have several early 90s issues of the two most popular Greek home computer magazines: Pixel and User. I'm wondering if you would like me to scan them; I've been meaning to throw them away due to extreme marital nagging, but it will be a pity if they're lost into oblivion. There are only two problems that might make you not want them:

-They're not strictly Amiga mags, although most of their contents are Amiga related other Home computers of the era are mentioned as well. Perhaps I could scan only the Amiga pages.
-They will all be Greek to you.

@P-J: OCR is not practical for what we are trying to achieve, and certainly isn't a priority. We might add some review text to aid searching but this is a longer term goal.

@alkis21: By all means if you are able to do nice scans of the pages then I'd be happy to add them if the content is Amiga relevant - but you'll have to do the indexing too. As you say - they'll be Greek to us.

Sounds like a plan. It will take quite some time as it's not something I can do overnight, but I believe it will be worth the trouble.

Just thinking about the numbers, if it takes 10 mins to OCR each page (that would be extremely quick including fixing mistakes) x 25,000 pages would take about half a year if you were working 24/7. That is simply not feasible.

If someone is particularly keen on a certain game and wants to OCR all the reviews of it, we can certainly include that text. But doing the whole lot is simply too big of a job.

That's a fair comment. Let's hope in 10 years the technology is available :)

I'm not talking about OCR'ing every page of every magazine; I'm talking about OCR'ing reviews and previews, and perhaps other interesting gaming articles, which would then be easily searchable and cross-referenced.

Admittedly, I'm ignorant of OCR technology (i.e., how long it takes to scan a page, almost totally free of errors), but I remember OCR'ing stuff one decade ago that even then seemed quite feasible. Surely, the concept has evolved since then.

Gone are the days of salivating over screenshots of the latest game, or over the advert for it. I was a kid back then. Now I would rather the information, and only the information, shrug.

A whole game, through killergorilla's non-bloat WHDLoad site or through some ADF source, can be downloaded almost as quickly as a four page review scan whereas one could OCR the reviews and previews for 100s of games, which could be downloaded in the blink of an eye, and search through in milliseconds.

If someone would OCR these reviews and previews, starting with the most famous, critically acclaimed games, I would happily proof read them, it would be a joy. To my mind, this idea serves more practical purpose than whole scans of magazines, for the Amiga culture as a whole, since information about Amiga games would be deciminated faster and more efficiently.

Yes, it can be nostalgic to see the actual pagescan of a magazine you purchased as a child, keep on scanning. But there should be alternatives for Amigans who don't want pretty pics, but just raw info.