Good morning,
I have created a folder in the files section that shows a progressive
project file as it moves through the research process. I am aware this location
has no CB&Q interest but as the Q had some key involvement in Montana and as
we are about to start looking at the Q locations, I thought this test project
might demonstrate the way we do things and give some idea of what the final
project might look like. The 3 files represent the progress to date and when
looking at the list of additional items to be added you will get the picture of
what we try to produce for any project we do.
The group I work with try to make sure all of our research documents are
backed up in digital format. For the most common items like ETT's and such this
is easy and poses no problems. For the large station plats, maps and engineering
documents it's clearly a lot more difficult to do. In simple terms we scan
documents that can be 46 inches wide and 40 feet long. They are eventually
placed as back up files in tiff format. The largest one we have is 1.6 GB's. In
a lot of cases we have a number of these large documents covering various parts
of the bigger places and often documents from a number of different dates. So
having backed up the documents we can now take from the files different
parts of a number of the documents and build up a bespoke document for the
research project.
None of this is rocket science but the kit and skills needed for this is to
say the least demanding and expensive. As our objectives are preservation and
quality bespoke documents to enhance our research projects we think the effort
is worthwhile. It may be no one is very interested in this, but if anyone is it
will serve as something for them to think about and it might even bring some
enjoyment.
Enjoy your Sunday,
Peter E Thompson.