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Re: Winter 1967 page 41 1 Min to copy into word

Bobby,

At this point I think you are being a little unfair to the current and past BOTs. I can sympathize with your views of the collecting trip proposal, but what you say about the eJAKA project is not accurate. Let me give you a little history.

The idea to produce a CD of the old JAKAs was born a few years ago. At that time I volunteered to investage methods of producing an archive on CD. Some the parameters that we decided on (and this was with a previous BOT, of course) were that the CD should mimic the appearance of the original, that is that the pages as view should faithfully reproduce the JAKAs they came from; that both grayscale and color photographs be accurately reproduced; that the issues be presented as issues, that is separate files each containing an issue; that the archive be searchable, so that, for instance, you could find all the articles on the CD pertaining to, say, Nothobranchius; that there would be some sort of index allow you to browse through all the issue; that the user NOT be able to alter the original. About the only format that satisfies these requirements is PDF.

I spent quite a lot of time scanning issues into Word with OCR software and trying to reformat the results to look like the original pages. That turned out to be a virtually impossible task. The very best results that I could achieve, and that was with hours of tweaking, looked something like the original, but the page breaks, for example, I could never get exactly right. I then switched to scanning into Adobe's Capture program. I works beautifully for this task. It reproduces page layout exactly as in the original. Again, I invite you to look at the sample JAKA that is on the website, http://www.aka.org/pages/publications/JAKA_1998_31_2.pdf.

The Capture software is a good tool, but it places some limitations on how we can share this work. In producing an issue in PDF format you go through a set series of steps. You scan the issue, you then go through the scanned images and mark it up as to whether a segment is text or image (you don't want to try to OCR the images, and mark any areas that you don't want included (imiperfections on the page, etc). You then pass that back to the program, which does the OCR and produces a draft document that you can proof read. Given the small fonts used in JAKA and the unusual words, there are quite a few OCR errors to correct. There is a spell checker which you can update as you go. Nevertheless, you have to basically read every word carefully. Once you finish the proofing, you again pass the document back to the program, which produces the PDF.

I give these details simply to point out that there is a lot involved. We bought the stand-alone version of the software, which does not allow sharing of tasks. Adobe sells an enterprise edition that can allow different people at workstations on an intranet to handle different stages of the project. However, to the best of my knowledge, that won't work over the internet and it is prohibitively expensive. Thus, the work from scanning to production of the PDFs has to be done by one person. Once the PDFs are produced others can be involved in putting together the CD itself.

Recently, a BOT member indicated that he knew of a publisher that would scann all the JAKAs for a reasonable price and it was proposed that we do this project commercially. However, I believe that publisher meant only that they could scan the pages, which would produce image files of each page - not very useful for browsing or searching. I would guess that to get this job done commercially could cost $30,000 or more. I do know that the ACA some years ago did a project like this, which cost far more than they could recoup with sales.

I am about half way through the production of the PDFs for the first CD (each CD will hold about 10 years of JAKAs). I have come to regard this as my "pet project" and would like to continue with it. Admittedly, the need to redo the web site interfered with my progress. Nevertheless, as I have already indicated, I will keep pushing ahead on the project. Hopefully, not too long from now I'll have the first CD content done. I'll keep you informed.

I realize that this is an eagerly anticipate product. I think it will benefit the members and the AKA financially, as long as we can do it economically. I'm afraid that means through volunteer labor. Please be patient and I'll keep working.

Getting back to the issue of the BOT. Please don't blame individual BOTs for what sometimes seems like slow progress. In my opinion, this is a good BOT that has as members some very well respected killie people. Admittedly they are dealing with an issue that is controversial. As long as they formulate a proposal and allow members at large to express their opinion, I have no complaint. Regarding the issue of online F&EL etc., I personally agree that it is time to try an online listing service. I think the BOT will listen to reasonable discussion. The best way to achieve it is to continue to state our support for the idea in terms of concrete proposals. It is likely that we will end up having a trial run, just as we did when the AKA site was first approved. That proved to be successful and now nobody would want to eliminate the AKA web site. Most likely an online F&EL will be the same. However, we won't get the BOT to listen to us by abusing them.

Barry

At 10:01 PM 7/31/2003 -0400, you wrote:
Hi Al,

I'd love to work on the KN/JAKA CD but I am a complete idiot when it comes
to computers. I can do email and surf the web and that is about it. I do not
even own a printer or a scanner. I don't think the AKA's BOT has ever gotten
serious about the CD idea. I sure wish the BOT had created a committee to
investigate the creation of really useful and necessary projects like putting ALL
old AKA literature on CD to be made available to the membership and public at
large and thereby raise money and knowledge instead of rushing to investigate
unnecessary and useless ideas like collecting trips. I do not think the BOT
cares about the CD idea and just sort of left it in Barry's overworked hands to
do with what he had time and energy to do. I am beginning to think for the
first time in 30 years of being in and around the AKA that the BOT exists in its
own world and is in reality very unaccountable to the membership. I never know
(until Tom's recent posting) how each member votes or what each member stands
for. It is all just done in the monthly letters, letters which should be
published or summerized rather fully in the BNL or somewhere. I am seeing that the
idea of a CD could have been done long ago if the BOT had been behind it. I am
seeing that an on line real time F&EL could have been done long ago if the
BOT had been behind it. I think it is the BOT that is dragging the AKA's feet. I
think we can forget about the CD until the BOT gets over its collecting trip
fantasy and starts paying attention to what would actually help the AKA and
the membership. It seems the idiotic obsession with endless new species and the
blaming of all poor breeding lines on bad genes -- when most so-called
inbreeding is in reality bad husbandary and lazy fishkeeping -- is the only POV
through which the killie hobby operates today. Unless Barry is superhuman, the
computer committee ignites itself into action or the BOT forgets about African
mudpuddles, I think the membershp can kiss a CD of all old AKA literature good
bye.
Al, thanks for scanning the old Roloff article. I had never seen that one
and it was nice to read some new -- to me -- Roloff tonight. In the old
Aquatic Life magazine that Roth put out, Roloff has some amazing articles on
killies and breeding in general. Most are things he did in the late 30's and early
50's that Roth translated into english. It always amazes me how up-to-date
Roloff is in his thinking and in his fishroom. I would have loved to have see his
presentation at the 1969 Convention in Palo Alto.

Bobby
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Barry J. Cooper, Prof. Emeritus, Dept. Biomedical Sciences, Cornell University
Adjunct faculty, College of Veterinary Medicine, Oregon State University
Home address: 27505 Riggs Hill Rd., Sweet Home, OR 97386 (bjc3 at cornell_edu)


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