1994-95 Governors' Letters

[Jonathan Berry]

Prior to recycling these, I wonder if they exist in digital form? The CFC website goes back to the 97-98 fiscal / governor year. I believe I have 96-97 in digital form, but have not found files for 94-95.

[Valer Eugen Demian]

Could you scan them to preserve them electronically?

[Kerry Liles]

Could you scan them to preserve them electronically?

I'm not sure how many pages we are talking about? If it is a reasonable number, (not even sure what is 'reasonable') - I will volunteer to scan them - assuming JB can send them to me registered mail or some other 'secure' method...

Kerry

[Jonathan Berry]

Could you scan them to preserve them electronically?

Yes. I'll do that. I did it before for some issues of "Northern" and distributed the PDFs to the handful of people who wanted them.

[Jonathan Berry]

I did it before for some issues of "Northern" and distributed the PDFs to the handful of people who wanted them.

As with many things, it doesn't pose a problem if one has the right equipment. Mostly just in case anybody still has a 10 MB limit for receiving a single email, I've divided the material into three emails, which will arrive (gradually) from an gmail account. The packages are:
--94-95 GL 1 and 2
--94-95 GL 3-5 (5 is the last of the year)
--miscellaneous letters received in connection with CFC year 1994-95 GLs.

Please message me or email at jberry@islandnet.com **and indicate which packages you wish to receive**.

[Kerry Liles]

As with many things, it doesn't pose a problem if one has the right equipment. Mostly just in case anybody still has a 10 MB limit for receiving a single email, I've divided the material into three emails, which will arrive (gradually) from an gmail account. The packages are:
--94-95 GL 1 and 2
--94-95 GL 3-5 (5 is the last of the year)
--miscellaneous letters received in connection with CFC year 1994-95 GLs.

Please message me or email at jberry@islandnet.com **and indicate which packages you wish to receive**.

Thanks for doing this Jonathan... Although this raises the very good question: who keeps this stuff on behalf of the CFC? I guess Bob Gillanders was one of the people who cleaned the Augean stables (the old CFC office condo space) and relocated some of the stuff - perhaps he can speak to this issue?

In general, there are physical archives (publications, letters, files etc) and the electronic counterparts. It is important to save electronic copies in a format that one can hope to use in future.

For example, saving Word Perfect files (as they existed natively) might mean you have them, but cannot read them anymore. Although MS Word is a plague on mankind, it is pretty reasonable about maintaining the ability to read older versions (and there is always the .rtf format that is a little more platform neutral)

[Jonathan Berry]

I was most pleased that at least one person wants the files, so the brief effort was not wasted.

In light of what you write, Kerry, the CFC's decision to offer its docs in PDF format must be praised, eh? That *is* the universal format for (read-only) documents. However, I was unable to download the 97-98 GLs at the CFC website. Is it a server problem, or maybe the docs don't exist any longer ...?

Ventura Publisher 2 (what CFC used in the 1990s) documents can be converted into compact PDF docs with a $100 piece of software (which I happen to have). More of a problem is the comcomitant necessity to have a working install of VP 2 available. It runs ugly in Win2K or up. I imagine that matters must be at least as hopeful for WordPerfect documents. According to Wiki, Corel released version X5 of WordPerfect in March 2010. Old VP documents have been fundamentally incompatible since Ventura 7, a total rewrite of the software.

Concerning documents at the CFC, I've assumed that everything not expressly saved (e.g., available at their website or with the National Archives) is gone.

The opportunity to scan and save something before recycling the paper isn't really a bad deal. The resultant PDF will be readable, it will be complete (word publishing files may omit photos or charts or cover pages or long submitted texts ...), except for the voting pages which of course I submitted long ago, smile. It often takes less time to scan to PDF than to find out whether you still have the original files and what condition they are in.

Thanks for doing this Jonathan... Although this raises the very good question: who keeps this stuff on behalf of the CFC? I guess Bob Gillanders was one of the people who cleaned the Augean stables (the old CFC office condo space) and relocated some of the stuff - perhaps he can speak to this issue?

In general, there are physical archives (publications, letters, files etc) and the electronic counterparts. It is important to save electronic copies in a format that one can hope to use in future.

For example, saving Word Perfect files (as they existed natively) might mean you have them, but cannot read them anymore. Although MS Word is a plague on mankind, it is pretty reasonable about maintaining the ability to read older versions (and there is always the .rtf format that is a little more platform neutral)

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

at least one person wants the files

I was the second but the request was probably lost in your trash/spam box

[Jonathan Berry]

I was the second but the request was probably lost in your trash/spam box

Egis, you were the first and only person so far to request the files. I haven't lost anything, I'm just deliberate (= slow).

Also available,
1993-94 Governors' Letters (and some correspondence) in one email.

[Jonathan Berry]

I was most pleased that at least one person wants the files, so the brief effort was not wasted.

[...] I was unable to download the 97-98 GLs at the CFC website. Is it a server problem, or maybe the docs don't exist any longer ...?

Egis requested the 94-95 GLs and I sent them. Nobody requested 93-94, but I sent them to Egis anyway. PDFs, not OCR'd.

The problem at the CFC site must have been server-related, as I was able to download a selection of 97-98 GLs ... just to test the system, not to read them, mind you.