Iris Catalog Library

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

I have some good news and some bad news!

First the good news. The Online catalog library now has over 900 catalogs.
Thanks to several people who have sent catalogs we have a decent collection
online but there are probably 3 times as many missing still. I still have
catalogs on hand that have not been scanned but I worry that with each day
some of this history is lost and would appreciate the help of members that may
know of collections that can be scanned.

Now the bad news. Today there are many catalogs that are only on websites.
There are no paper copies to be preserved for posterity. Fortunately a very
few nurseries put a catalog in a pdf format on their websites as does Tempo
Two Nursery. These are easily saved. But most online catalogs are really the
website themselves. These are more difficult. I have the latest version of
Adobe Acrobat and it allows me to convert a website into a pdf. At least in
theory. Unfortunately to capture the whole website it takes a lot of memory
and it takes a long time to copy. I have had situations where the Acrobat
program worked overnight copying and in the morning was still not finished.
One site took 24 hours to complete and was over 500,000 KB. Others stopped
working at 150,000 KB and 8 hours of work. I try to maximize the process by
staying off the computer while Acrobat copies but that means little else gets
done. While still possible to make copies it is often so difficult and time
consuming they do not get done. For this reason I am concerned that we will be
losing our current history. For that matter many of the online catalogs from
years past are already gone with no record. I am throwing this out to discuss
to see if anyone has some ideas that may help.


--

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

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