P6 Index - About time we had an update

B

Brian-Northampton

Administrator
I was looking through my collection of P6 News the other day and realised that there is a wealth of information contained within their pages that I've forgotten about. It's true that we occasionally get an update to the P6 Index, but the last one was in 2003. I can understand that production costs are prohibitive on producing and posting these out, and that this is probably why.

So I've created one. I've scanned in the 2003 issue of the index, OCR'd it to convert it back into text, corrected the errors in the recognition, checked and if required corrected every entry since August 1994 (which is my first copy from when I joined) and trawled through 2004 - 2008 to complete the index and bring it back up to date.

I've now got a searchable PDF file of the P6 Index which is far more useful to us IT literate folks than a paper copy (e.g. updates can be monthly). I'm doing similar stuff with my Practical Classics magazines so that I can have all the stuff I need on my computer (and recycle the magazines), then I can perform desktop searches using Google Desktop (superb :D ) to find anything related to my query.

Richard - How about putting this new P6 Index on the website for all to download and see? Might help persuade non-members to join if they see the sort of stuff we publish, after all, it is an award winning magazine.

If anyone wants a copy, send me a PM.

Brian.
 
That sounds great Brian, could you email me a copy over and I'll get it on the site. webmaster@p6roc.com

Out of interest do you have it in any other format e.g. word / excel, so I may be able to import it into a database format, makes it easier to create a web-based version, rather than everybody downloading the whole document.
 
Excellent work Brian, but our last P6 News Index was done in October 2007! and is currently available from Carolyn Bates our regalia officer.

But nice to keep it bang up to date.

Mike.
 
Hmm thanks Mike, should I have known that there was a new one in October 07? That would have made life easier :wink: I hope I'm not treading on anyone's toes - I actually thought it would be one of those "Oh God not again" type of jobs that only got done when needed! Perhaps I'll ask Carolyn for a copy so that I can do a comparison and make sure everything's been caught.

Anyway, I've no problem in keeping the index up to date and passing Richard a copy each month for the website. Yes Richard, I've got it in Excel - much easier to slice 'n' dice it that way. I'll email you a copy tonight when I get home from work.

Cheers,
Brian.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top