My friends - I am going to forego a data post today in order to bring you up to date on what the next digitization projects will be, based on the vote taken last week, and to address the possibility of a society for descendants of the pioneer settlers of the JP, which we also discussed last week. In the case of the digitization projects, the final tally of votes that came in caused the Calloway County Inventory, Appraisement and Sale Bill book to slightly edge out the Ballard County Deed Book A(which is the volume that contains the re-recording of deeds destroyed in the 1880 courthouse fire there). However, the difference in votes was only five. As a result, and because I have a bit of a concern about placing different county records on the same CD with each other, I have decided to do the Ballard County Deed Book A digitization, which will be placed on a CD with the Ballard County Deed Index. That latter item was not on the list of items I asked about last week, but it would be a natural additional item to have on the same disk as Deed Book A. Simultaneously, with the above, digitization of the Calloway County IA&SB book will proceed, but it will be coupled with the Calloway County Road Order Book on the same disk. So there will be a total of four items that will be digitized in the next project. This is already under way, with about 50 images of the Ballard Deed Book A already digitized. There are some 650+ pages in this book, but because of the size of the book(large ledger size), and the manner in which it was originally filmed, there will be about 850 total images necessary to handle the entire book. We were particularly fortunate in the Graves County Order Book G project, since each order book page was filmed almost exactly right to create a perfectly sized image for our purposes. Other record books were filmed differently. It may be that CD space will become a factor, as a result, and it could be that only Book A can be contained on a single disk. I will monitor that and keep the Lists informed. The same may be true for the Calloway item, and I will also watch that one closely. I expect the digitization to go somewhat faster on these upcoming projects, as I am working on upgrading my homemade system to a more automated one that can scan film in an auto mode, rather than having to do it page by page manually. I will still have to enhance and otherwise work on each page, but much time will be saved in getting the image into my computer if the improvements work as planned. The indexing process will also be easier than that which we see in trying to index order books. On the matter of the formation of a society of descendants of JP pioneers, there was less than 100 "votes" cast on that question, which is about 13% of the JP List total subscribership. The percentage voting on the digitization projects, by comparison, was 36%. Given all that would have to be done to plan, organize and maintain such an organization, a fairly high interest level would need to be present, and it does not appear that we yet have that level of interest. All but two of those who did respond and expressed an opinion in one way or another were in favor of the idea, which is encouraging, but it appears we have a ways to go before we will be able to really get into this type of project. If anyone would like to attempt it independently, of course, they would have my full cooperation and assistance, but it will be a task, I think, that will require a number of people working together to get it off the ground and to maintain it properly and see to those day-to-day administrative duties that must be done. Tomorrow, we will start a new series on the legal community in the JP region. -B ====================================================================