Reply To: ONlin eData acress

[huelsingdavid]

Sorry you missed the Austin Convention.

There was a preview of the “members only section” during the meeting. It is still in Beta testing right now, and only limited content is currently posted for testing purposes. In theory it could go live anytime.

There are several issues leading to delays.

1) Lack of volunteer time – the few volunteers we have on the project are involved in multiple MPHS projects, not to mention involvement in their own personal lives, work, and family. We could really use some additional volunteers, especially those with access to and experience with software like Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, and website experience.

2) Content – What content would members want, what content should be public access, what is copyright protected and shouldn’t be posted online (we have already had to remove some content because of requests from copyright owners).

3) Time involved in getting the material ready to post online. While we have over 100,000 items digitized, that is only the first step. Files need to be named, organized, cropped, edited, metatagged. Sometimes and hour or more of time is required just to get one file completed and uploaded. The uploading of some of the higher res files is also very time consuming. In the case of scans of slides and photos, we have many that were scanned, but no data regarding location or equipment type was added to the original file, going back and finding the original piece and adding that information is also time consuming.

In the end, we would prefer to put out a quality product and not something that needs to be redone a year or two after it is posted.

We have asked for additional volunteer support, anyone interested in helping with the digital work should contact Ted Ferkenhof. Most of the work can be done remotely from home computer if you have a high speed internet access. Knowledge with railroad locations and equipment would also help identify the photos.