A frequent challenge when making digital collections is determining how best to represent a digital object, so that it is true to the original object but still functions properly in its digital form.
For example, in the case of newspapers, it can be a challenge to determining how best to represent the two page spread. In its analog form, a newspaper is generally viewed two pages at a time. This is not a problem, because users are easily able to focus on one part of the two page spread at a time. However, when digitized, newspapers are usually presented one page at a time, so as not to overwhelm the user. There is so much content on a single newspaper page, that it can be overwhelming to present two newspaper pages on a single screen.
There are also technical problems to consider. A two page spread is twice as taxing on a computer as a single newspaper page.
The problem, however, is that sometimes content is spread across two newspaper pages. For example, take the following two newspaper:
The word “globally” is spread across two pages. Since “glob” and “ally” are both words independently, this could be confusing to the user. In this case, it is important to show both pages at the same time. Like this:
However, in most cases we still show one page at a time, to keep the display simple and to reduce the strain on our users’ computers.