Online Library report

["Robert Pries " <101p@rewrite.aisboard.org>]

A few days ago, we reached another benchmark of 2,000 articles, journals and
catalogs in the Hager/Dubose online library. Before we pat ourselves on the
back I will note that the Daffodil Society has over 3,000 entries in their
online library. bDaffodilsb is a much smaller topic than Iris. We
presently have 1,354 catalogs as part of that 2,000. I project that if we were
to cover the topic of Iris well there will be over 6,000 catalogs in the
online catalog library. Presently I have been able to add about 500-600
catalogs a year. This means if things remain the same it will be ten years
before we have a comprehensive online library. I am not sure I will be here in
ten years. So I am looking for ways to improve this process.

A great boon to us has been the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Each week that
consortium of libraries puts up about 1,000 new journals, catalogs, etc. Of
those I general discover about 10 catalogs that are important for iris. The
USDA is a big contributor of catalogs, but they tend not to have the overseas
catalogs. That means the surge in Iris growing that occurred in France, Great
Britain, etc. between 1840 and 1920 is poorly documented. We are left with a
very few Iris specialist who generally also were general nurseries. The USDA
seems to be uploading catalogs of around 1926 and 1927 currently. These
contain a wealth of Iris nurseries. So suddenly years like 1926 are
represented by 60-70 catalogs. It seems it takes a month or two for the USDA
to get through one year. As nice as it is to get these, it may take ten years
to get through the twentieth century. B  B 

Finding catalogs is important to do immediately. Each year many of our members
die or go into nursing homes. The Iris literature they have collected goes
into the dumpster. It is critical that we have an organized effort to find and
save this information NOW.

My dream for the library is that it becomes the primary research area for
Iris. Presently it functions for some research. But no one knows what is in
the physical library. The online version is searchable a number of ways. But
as I have pointed out is far from complete. I have prepared a word document
snapshot to show what catalogs we have online. It is downloadable at
http://wiki.irises.org/Hist/InvetorySnapshotOfCatologsByNursery# I would
appreciate all the help I can get in adding catalogs to the online library.

How could we go about improving this scenario. We have paid for scanning of
catalogs in the past. At 80+ cents a page it would have cost thousands for
just the scanning I have done personally. It is much less expensive to draw
from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. But it will be a long wait for more
recent or foreign catalogs. B  Scanning is very time consuming and tedious. I
sometimes feel good if I can finish one of the 80 page catalogs in a day, and
I am amazed that someone would do that work for $70. I hate the thought of
paying for work if we can find volunteers. But volunteers require the tools. I
pay $20 a month for Adobe Acrobat so I can create a searchable pdf. Scanners
run around $500. So essentially it costs $700 to set a volunteer up to scan
catalogs. If a volunteer could scan 3 catalogs a week it might be a good deal.
Perhaps there are members who already have scanners but would commit to do
fifty catalogs over a year if we paid for their Adobe Acrobat.


--

Bob Pries
Zone 7a
Roxboro, NC
(336)597-8805

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