Morning Fellow List Members, Please be aware that this e-mail is a lengthy one. For those not interested in my archival pursuits my best recommendation is simple, delete the e-mail if you do not wish to be bothered. For those who are interested it is my express hope that this e-mail will be of general interest to you. Since I have been remiss of late in reporting my progress in creating a high-quality digital archive specifically pertaining to the German Baptist Church I thought a review to be in order. This has been a particularly fruitful year with many publications both Brethren and non-Brethren successfully digitized and processed in their entirety. Please feel assured that the quality of the process far exceeds the sort of drivel viewable at archives.org. While the various firms submitting the material to that site have their hearts set in the right place, they do not meet the standards as set forth by the National Archives and Records Administration. Furthermore they actually impede the creation of a digital archive and have instead become more of a site devoted to espousing Xeroxing and sub-standard attempts. Yes, the information if made available but I wish you to ask yourselves one question, Will it stand the test of time and is that what we wish to leave to posterity and our descendants? Shall sub-standard results be all that is left for future generations to lament at such failed amateurish compilations? It is more the case of svelte talking salesmen espousing the virtue of such projects while not mentioning any nationally recognized standards. As long as they get the money and have played the electronic shell game to its final inevitable conclusion (they winyou lose), is all that matters to them. I am not against such efforts. But I am against such efforts being termed as a digital archive representing hundreds of thousands of images. Why for the life of me they can term a cropped image as an archive escapes my comprehension. A cropped image of a page does indeed infer the information inferred on that page of text. BUT, this is akin to taking a precious photograph of Grandpa and Grandma Brower and cropping them out of the larger photograph of the farm on which they lived. Yes, their image is there but it is out of context and any person viewing the image realizes that there was something more. It would be better to not have scanned the photograph than to crop the scanned image. And this is being done in you and your descendants names. Without your permission and much as our so kind Federal Government all too frequently does. What they dont know wont hurt them! Enough of my personal dilemmas with people who allow their management styles to overrule their common sense. Either do it right or get out of my way has always been my motto and to that extent I shall continue my efforts to the best of my ability. As long as I am able to work and fund these efforts I will continue to do so contrary to the wishes of those with the power to overrule my conscientious concerns. Remember this; I owe my allegiance to the records themselves and the memories of those who were so gracious as to create them for us. They have left us a rich legacy resplendent with their heritage. It remains our charge to properly care for the originals and the implied legacy we shall leave to future generations of researches and historians. Newspapers scanned: I started the year of 2010 by finalizing the 1889 volume of The Gospel Messenger. This will likely be the last newspaper scanned at 400 pixels per inch 8 bit gray scale. I found, after thousands of hours of scanning and processing digital images, that while gray scale images save space on a computer disk that the efforts to tonally adjust the images far outweighed the advantages of space saving. Interestingly by scanning at 300 ppi and 24 bit color it was far easier to adjust the final image thus requiring less time on my part. And the Optical Character Recognition results were nearly identical. So after a careful case study I have decided to scan in color all future periodicals. The difference between scanning at 300 ppi and 400 ppi saves disk space with the final decision being that the smaller dimensional publications will be scanned at the higher resolution with the large ones being at the smaller resolution. The lower 300 ppi images still fall within the range permissible by NARA standards. The Gospel Messenger of 1889 consists of 1624 documents. Of these 810 images are the raw non-tonally adjusted images, the enhanced set consists of the same 810 images that have been tonally adjusted, there is a standard PDF that meets archival specs and another PDF that is full-text searchable, and finally there is a metadata target in the root, raw and enhanced directories. Metadata can be just as important as the image itself and for ease of explanation you can consider it as information akin to the old card catalogs some of us are still familiar with. In total the 1889 Gospel Messenger comprises nearly 25 gigabytes in total. That would be 5 DVD disks in case the size of the files escapes you. <g> To date the volumes of The Gospel Messenger scanned range from 1883 to 1889 and I am considering in the future the possibility of scanning them in color. I was able to borrow the 1896 volume of The Brethren Evangelist from The Ashland University Archives and its fellow institution The Brethren Church Archives. Both are located in Ashland, Ohio and a trip to their facilities would behoove any wishing to research this branch of the German Baptist Church. Their holdings are quite extensive and the staff admirable for their efforts. This compilation consists of, in all, 1635 documents. The entirety of the newspaper was scanned at 300 ppi 24 bit color using the larger gamut space Adobe RGB (1998) specifications. If you are thinking of scanning your precious photographs and documents I would definitely recommend the Adobe RGB (1998) color space as the differences, while minute, do show on a quality color print. This set of records totals 32 gigabytes on my NAS server. Normally the deal I make with a loaning institution is to make any archival repairs necessary and to return the original in better shape than when I received them. My contribution, for the loan of the originals, is to furnish on a non-archival media disk a non-printable and non-searchable PDF file but in this case I was feeling magnanimous. With the aid of several patrons who have donated-to-the-cause plus my own contributions, and by some careful financial manipulations, I was able to purchase in the recent past, a set of archival DVDs which can be printed on. As part of the financial hoarding I was also able to purchase a printer that uses archival ink. Using these resources and directing my efforts to the aforementioned volume of The Brethren Evangelist I created a set of 8 archival (100+ year) DVDs and printed onto them information pertinent to the record set therein contained. Not having a disk case large enough to hold this 8-disk compilation I purchased a box of 4-disk DVD cases using two of them in the process. The cover for the disk compilation can be seen at <http://brethrenarchives.com/newspapers/ev/1896/DVD_cover.pdf>. This creation was donated to the Ashland University Archives / Brethren Church Archives with all the documentation that goes with a digital archive including the applicable metadata information. Such a project would have cost them well in excess of $1,000 and is a better quality creation than they could have afforded. And I do need to stress that this compilation is a digital archive and not the sort of drivel seen on any Internet site it has been my misfortune to view. All-in-all I am quite proud of the delivered set of disks and the disk covers look just gorgeous when printed on archival photographic paper. I was also able to borrow a disk from the same repository containing images of the 1895 Brethren Evangelist. This had been created by the Heckman Bindery of northern Indiana (now HF Group) under a paid contract from Ashland. For the grand sum of some $300.00 the University received a PDF only no original images nor the metadata that should have accompanied the compilation. The scanning was below par would be an understatement. While the newspaper measures some 9½ X 12¾ the scans were all at 11 X 17 and not archival by any stretch of the imagination. To add insult to injury the PDF was delivered to Ashland on a 35 cent disk and a flimsy case like your grandchild would use to hold their stolen MP3 music files. Such is the work ethics of HF group. Yes, the information was retained but heaven forbid if the original newspaper ever becomes acidic and deteriorates. Oh wait, is that not why we are digitizing these records! Even when first entering into the realm of digital archiving my efforts were superior to the documentable and viewable efforts of the HF Group. My contribution to Ashland for loaning me the disk was to make the file full-text searchable. So the next time you are in the neighborhood of Ashland, Ohio please feel free to share in my efforts and contributions and use the presented set of records. Almanacs / Annuals scanned: At the same time that the 1896 Brethren Evangelist was loaned to me a collection of Brethren Church Annuals was made available as well. In all this set of records contained some 40+ volumes of the annuals plus two interesting volumes concerning the 1882 split out of which the Brethren Church arose. The first volume is the proceedings of their first conference which was held at Dayton, Ohio in the Music Hall on June the 6th and 7th, 1883. The other is to be, for a short while, a little secret to be held by yours truly. <g> I am at this time unable to give a report of either the number of documents nor the size of the disk space occupied. This is chiefly because the set digitized is intermixed with other almanacs and publications thus limiting the extraction of this information. Leave it to be said that at present the root directory (and the sub-directories) for these publications holds 8,210 files at 152 gigabytes in 67 directories. So please dont ask for a copy of the DVDs. When completed I estimate that this set of records (to date) will occupy nearly 35 4.5 gigabyte DVD media disks. Or at least I think my math is correct. There are more almanacs and annuals needed to complete the set and hopefully in the near future they will become available. As my contribution to the cause I delivered an archival DVD disk containing the majority of the Brethren annuals in the collection which amounted to some 1.5 gigabytes of PDFs. As above you can use these disks the next time you are near Ashland, Ohio. I do have a set of PDF files that far exceed the donated set. I reserve these files for those who support my efforts. Hopefully in the future a kind donor will come up with funds so that Ashland can obtain the full set of printable and full-text searchable files. Those in the know are aware that I operate on the principle that you scratch my back I scratch yours. <g> Books scanned. The list is numerous but not as numerous as I had hoped when the year first began. To date I have scanned the 400 pages of Elmer Leroy Craiks A History of the Church of the Brethren in Kansas and I will leave the imagination of you the reader as to the contents therein. It was published in 1922. Needless to say if you are interested in the congregations and people who settled in the state this work is a must read. Professor Craik was at one time a student at McPherson College in Kansas and who later became an educator at the same place. This is a book where it is fortunate for us that he was somewhat removed from the heritage of having been Brethren from birth as he had no preconceived notions. His writing style is clear and concise and the research performed in penning the book is admirable even by my stringent standards. The file count for the archived work is 805 files and 10.5 gigabytes and encompasses the requisite raw and enhanced images, the metadata targets and two PDF files.. Another congregational history I processed was the Thirty-One Years of Organized Work in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana by Church of the Brethren from 1891 to 1922 by James H. Morris. While not as well written as Craiks Kansas work this is still one of those required books to have in your library. The chief detraction of this work is that Morris relied, in my opinion, too heavily on newspaper articles and not enough on research. However this is to be understood as he was relying on corresponding contributors because of the large geographical area the book covers. There are some good tidbits in the book that you will not find anywhere else. The file count on this publication is 1073 and the disk space is nearly 13 gigabytes and the breakdown of the files is as above. The third German Baptist Brethren book I digitally archived was Elder Otho Wingers History of the Church of the Brethren in Indiana published in 1917. There are problems with this work that can only be found through diligent research but it still stands as one of the seminal reference works for Brethren researchers and historians. This compilation comprises 965 files totaling 12.8 gigabytes with the file makeup as in the earlier volumes. The final book digitized (to my standards) was Henry Adams Thompsons Our Bishops: A Sketch of The Origin and Growth of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ as Shown in the Lives of its Distinguished Leaders as published in 1889. This book, more commonly called Our Bishops United Brethren is a good primer on the history of the United Brethren church prior to 1900. What is of interest to me is that many passages in the volume are drawn from actual papers of the people covered in the book. The book, while it does not cover the congregations, does mention many of the early ones and so for general reference this book is a must for a serious historians library. The heavily acidified volume as digitized represents 1391 files (makeup as above) and 16.5 gigabytes. I wish to thank Debra Sotzing of Troy, Ohio for obtaining this invaluable book to include in the digital project. While not a German Baptist Brethren work this volume does hold great interest to researchers and historians. Books created: In amongst all this digital work I still found time, somehow, to create two books that have been on my list. I own a large collection of the Reformed Church Messenger dating from the mid-1830s up into the 1890s that were donated to me sometime ago. It was either beg for them or they were going to be cut up and Xeroxed for the marriages and deaths. So I went thru several volumes of the 1840s and pulled the deaths and marriages for inclusion into a book. Many who know me enough to know that I do not abstract information from newspapersI include the full text of the information or I dont even tackle it. The final book I created came to 108 pages and covers from Sept. 17, 1845 to Dec. 29, 1847. The second book, and soon to be released, is the death registers of Bedford county, Pennsylvania up to 1905. I have had these images in my computer since 2004 but just never had the time to finalize them. This book lacks only the cleaning up of my indexing for the roughly 380 page book. In the pipeline: At present I have the loan of a small collection of 16 of some German Baptist Brethren / Church of the Brethren almanacs to scan and process. While I have the majority of the various almanacs and annuals in my computer there are gaps and I will hopefully be able to locate and borrow the missing volumes in the near future. I was just this past week allowed to borrow a two volume set of the Primitive Christian of 1876 which will be scanned in the upcoming weeks. Each volume on loan is missing issues each but by scanning and digitally merging the two sets we will come up with one complete digital volume. I also have on loan the 1895 and 1897 issues of the Brethren Evangelist. We believe them to be complete sets but in looking at the condition of the originals it is hoped that digitally we will have a satisfactory archive when finished. The mentioned records should be completed within the next three months. After that it is likely that there will be more Gospel Messengers scanned as well as various Brethren congregational histories but only time will tell. Conclusion: I am happy to report that my computer woes are nearly at an end. For some time I have been reluctant to admit that I was sorely missing enough storage space. With judicious resource saving I was able to purchase a stand-alone Network Attached Storage setup. This system, and the in place 4 terabyte hard drives, will allow me to offload less often used files from my computers. This $1,800 investment was needed to allow me to continue to expand the digital archives disk space and will permit the expansion (by adding additional drives) for the foreseeable future. So, I have been extremely busy in the previous six months of 2010 and hopefully this will continue. As I said, this was going to be a lengthy report and the only way I could ensure that it reached those who have contributed-to-the-cause was to post it in a general fashion. Cordially, A. Wayne Webb