Jerry,
Thanks for the compliments. The KIP and partnership that makes it is an incredible and growing resource. Yes, the gray scale with the early issues is disappointing. Even though our partners at the University of South Florida were using the state-of-the-art equipment to scan the issues, the faint mimeo printing was extremely difficult to scan and preserve, not just for the text and images, but for a lot of the hidden background attributes. Following lots of experimenting, adjusting, and pulling of hair, they managed to preserve the information in gray scale, sacrificing the color. George *************************** George Veni, Ph.D. Executive Director National Cave and Karst Research Institute 400-1 Cascades Avenue Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220-6215 USA Office: 575-887-5517 Mobile: 210-863-5919 Fax: 575-887-5523 [email protected] www.nckri.org From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, August 03, 2012 01:32 To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Texas Caver on the Karst Information Portal Excellent work, George. It's good to have the Texas Caver available to the general community, especially the older issues which are very difficult to find in most folks' collections or libraries. Just to be fair, those that access the current version of the KIP archive of the Texas Caver will find that the early issues are in grayscale rather than color, and the scanning quality was fair but not great. Still, the information is all there if not the aesthetic quality of the original. Note that some of the newer issues are rather large files as the compressed pdf versions were not used. Jerry Atkinson Texas Speleological Survey ******************************************* In a message dated 8/3/2012 12:43:09 A.M. Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: A couple of years ago the TSA directors agreed that I could send my complete collection of The Texas Caver for scanning and free digital access the Karst Information Portal (www.karstportal.org <http://www.karstportal.org/> ). The process took longer than I thought, but the reasons were worth the wait. The Karst Information Portal is created by a partnership of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute, University of South Florida, International Union of Speleology, and the University of New Mexico. Its purpose is to serve as a free, open access research tool for anyone and anything related to caves and karst. Currently, the major effort going on with the Portal is developing a major, digital, open access cave and karst library. The Texas Caver is one of 70 newsletters and journals from 17 different countries currently available through the Portal. While the Portal gets many offers from cavers wanting to help and offering to do the scans, that isn’t practical. The scanning, OCRing, metadata documentation, and many hidden digital archiving features conducted by the professional library staff at the University of South Florida is far beyond what any person who doesn’t work in a professional digital archiving facility can achieve. Some of the hidden work is developing flexibility and functionality, including for use with emerging technologies that aren’t currently available but will be in the future. That is much of what took the extra time. Also, there was major upgrade of the Portal. I’ll send a separate announcement on that in a week or two, but I find the Portal easier to use and more flexible, and there were behind-the-scenes and less obvious upgrades I’ll report on later. Though my collection of The Texas Caver is complete, the online version on the Portal is complete only through 2009; TSA decided to restrict access to the most recent three years to only TSA members. Next year the 2010 issues will be posted. Also, the Portal’s collection is missing the issues for 1968 and 2001. My copies of 1968 and 2001 were too tightly bound and some of the text for those years was hidden in the binding, but I’m now working to get those issues from other sources. While this message is mainly intended for Texas cavers, I know cavers from around the country also read this list. If any of your would like your newsletters posted on the Portal so information on what you’re doing can be more easily shared with the rest of the caving world, let me know and I’ll work with you to make that happen. Don’t assume “It’s just a grotto newsletter and no big deal.” Grotto and regional newsletters collectively are the largest and most important sources of maps, descriptions, photos, and other information on caves, and it is often not available anywhere else. Now with the Karst Information Portal, your efforts can be more recognized, appreciated, and of benefit to cavers everywhere. George *************************** George Veni, Ph.D. Executive Director National Cave and Karst Research Institute 400-1 Cascades Avenue Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220-6215 USA Office: 575-887-5517 Mobile: 210-863-5919 Fax: 575-887-5523 [email protected] www.nckri.org
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