DR West : Help needed in retyping Founder's Day addresses

[kerrensimmonds]

Hertford Old Blues will remember Miss West's Founder's Day Addresses. She gave me the scripts of them all (1942 to 1972) in 1993. I lent them to the then Curator of the Museum at Horsham so that they could be copied.. and then they were lost (despite anguished enquiries over several years).
Cut to the end of last year, when I came into contact with a non-Old Blue who is working one day a week, on a voluntary basis, in the Museum. In the very week of Miss West's funeral, he FOUND her Founder's Day addresses!
They have now been restored to me, and I am having them photocopied at the moment.
A group of us is preparing to produce them as a single publication, to be made available against donations at the Memorial Service and beyond....but we need help in retyping from the photocopies, so that Viv, our Printer, can convert it all to DTP and into a booklet.
So this is an appeal for anyone who can type and who has access to the internet so that whatever they retype from a photocopy can be sent to Viv and reformatted into the one booklet.
It looks as if the Memorial Service will be on a Sunday, early in the Summer Term. Watch this space for that...
If you think that you could help with the typing up (whether you are a Hertford or Horsham Old Blue....) please either respond via this thread, or PM me.
Thanks.
Kerren Simmonds
(Chair of the OGA from the 1980's until it died....a couple of years ago!)

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Hi Kerren

If are able to email me a scan, I am more than happy to lend a hand.

Best wishes

Caroline

[J.R.]

Ditto

[englishangel]

and me. pm with address

[kerrensimmonds]

Thanks all for your responses. Will be in touch when the photocopies get to me from our Reprographics dept. The more we can share out the task, the lesser the load on individuals!

[kerrensimmonds]

Just thought I would reassure people that we have not forgotten either a Memorial Service, or turning the FD addresses into a booklet.

a) It is likely that the Memorial Service will be on Sunday 16 September - an afternoon Evensong (only one Sunday appeared free in the Summer Term, and that was the week before Old Blues Day...)

at least this gives us time to :-
b) produce the booklet properly (so I will be in touch again with the volunteer typists!)
c) make careful and detailed arrangements for the service
d) publicise it widely

Please let me know if anyone has any queries...

[englishangel]

acknowledged

[Katharine]

a) It is likely that the Memorial Service will be on Sunday 16 September - an afternoon Evensong (only one Sunday appeared free in the Summer Term, and that was the week before Old Blues Day...)

As my Mother will celebrate her 90th birthday the previous day, that will have to take priority. I am not sure yet what we are doing for Mother but she is the first in her family known to reach this milestone. I have just come back from a weekend with her, and she should make it long past September, unless she succumbs to a passing infection/fall etc.

[kerrensimmonds]

Dear all....
This confirms that I now have the FD addresses photocopied from our Reprographics dept.
So far there are about 7 of us who have offered to help - including Caroline. Unless anyone else volunteers in the near future, I propose to divide the bundle into 7and then send each person a parcel. Would that be OK?
Viv (who will be printing it all up and turning it into the book for the Memorial Service) says there are no formatting instructions. Just type into Word (any font, any spacing) but be careful about capital letters and full stops. Only press 'return' when wanting to move to another paragraph. When done, e mail it to her - I will put her e mail address into the parcel when I send you the photocopies.
Would you be able to finish your batch by the end of June, do you think, please?

[J.R.]

Dear all....
This confirms that I now have the FD addresses photocopied from our Reprographics dept.
So far there are about 7 of us who have offered to help - including Caroline. Unless anyone else volunteers in the near future, I propose to divide the bundle into 7and then send each person a parcel. Would that be OK?
Viv (who will be printing it all up and turning it into the book for the Memorial Service) says there are no formatting instructions. Just type into Word (any font, any spacing) but be careful about capital letters and full stops. Only press 'return' when wanting to move to another paragraph. When done, e mail it to her - I will put her e mail address into the parcel when I send you the photocopies.
Would you be able to finish your batch by the end of June, do you think, please?

Depends on how large the bundle is !!

[jhopgood]

Kerren
If you can get some to me, I will lend a hand.
Just a thought based on my experience wth letters sent to me.
Unless they are hand written, It should be possible to use the OCR function on most scanning software to convert into an electronic format and thence to Word. It's best to do paragraph at a time, as then one can read and proof what has been OCRed and then move on to the next. It means correcting rather than straight typing and can save time.

[kerrensimmonds]

THANK YOU JOHN!

OCR will not work, however....(if it would have, they would have been OCR'd on the University's scanners, and all would have been well). Unfortunately they are the carbon copies of some very very very old fashioned typing (remember they started in the 1940's) and the quality is not good enough to OCR. Some of the pages have tiny handwritten amendments, and many of them had rusty paperclips attached (now removed). So the originals have been photocopied and blown up to A4 size - the print is bigger but fuzzier - and unless someone has a really really really sophisticated scanner which can cope with such print, I think the only answer is to retype from scratch.

But I am delighted to add you to the list cos it means a little less work for everyone else! So thank you again.....

I will be sending the stuff out in the next couple of days. So John which address on the CHA Advisory Board list should I use?

Love
Kerren

[Vonny]

Sorry for not volunteering - I really don't think I would have the time what with the kids & work. And everything else

[kerrensimmonds]

Don't worry Yvonne! There are now eight of us, so the job is getting smaller by the minute!
Priorities are priorities after all. DRW would have been the first to recognise that.
Kerren

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Don't worry Yvonne! There are now eight of us, so the job is getting smaller by the minute!
Priorities are priorities after all. DRW would have been the first to recognise that.
Kerren

The digits are primed and ready for action once the parcel arrives.

I should know by now not to promise to meet deadlines before I know precisely how much work is involved, but will let you know well in advance if I think that I will be unable to comply. I'm a proficient typist, and even remember to proof read before hitting send sometimes , so I don't envisage any problem.

Caroline