N&W magazines

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This is great news, Ken. 

As someone with access to a fairly complete collection, I can vouch that the Magazine is a tremendous resource for everyone from the historian to the merely curious. 

Matt Goodman

> On Feb 14, 2021, at 6:10 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Jeff
> 
> That has been an on-going project. I initially hoped to have brought it to conclusion last summer. Unfortunately, the move of materials from GOB-East interrupted a lot of my effort and I am now playing catch up with the Arrow and has set the N&W magazine effort behind. 
> 
> BTW, the Jan-Feb-Mar issue of the Arrow was mailed two weeks ago. And depending on the postal service should be arriving in your mail sometime soon. Please do not post to the list when yours arrives. We have no control over the postal service. Just as an aside, the postal service, in the midst of far poorer service compared to a year ago, increased our postal rate fee by 29.5 percent in January!
> 
> The magazines were scanned, ever single issue, including some extra things such as inserts. To make them more usable, Ron Davis has prepared a search engine to find employee names, but that database still needs a fair amount of work to make it ready for public release, as some results are inconsistent. 
> 
> The N&W assigned page numbers beginning on the January issue with page one and the December issue might start with page 600. This was not consistent in the first year or so, as each issue began with page one, but that changed in time. In addition, the results give you a issue and page number such as, lets say August 1950, page 479. 
> 
> When the PDFs of the magazine are made, the files simply start at page 1 and run through however many pages. I’ve been going through, numbering each page with “FC” “IFC”, (Front Cover, Inside Front Cover) then the starting page number, then “IBC” and “BC” (Inside Back Cover and Back Cover). There are a few issues that had a special insert, and numbered those pages differently, so that has to be addressed as well.
> 
> So, when you open the file for August 1950, that means you have to manually page through and look at page numbers (which were not always on each page, BTW) to find page 479. When I assign page numbers, then in Acrobat, you can simply punch in the page number and it will take you right to it.
> 
> I’m also checking each issue for problems, such as a missing page, or a page not correctly scanned, and fixing that. They also are getting water marked to make it more difficult for someone to just copy and sell our discs on various internet sights.’
> 
> As well, as originally scanned, these make huge PDF files, i.e. in excess of 150 MB per issue, I have been reducing file size, which does not effect readability or quality, to bring them to more reasonable 15-20 MB per issue. On many computers, a 150 MB file is really large, and slow to utilize.
> 
> The magazines are great information on the railroad and its history, up to about the Nickel Plate/Wabash merger, when it became so large, the people aspect was lost and it became more oriented to strictly a business publication.
> 
> When bound volumes of the magazine were made for internal use, many had indexes for each year bound in, I am also trying to gather those up to include them when possible. Those indexes were only made through 1966, when as the handwritten note on the typed index said, “indexing stopped on account ‘budget cuts?.”
> 
> The plan, at this point, is to make these available by decade, such as 1920s (June 1923-December 1929), 1930s (January 1930-December 1939, January 1940-December 1949, January 1950-December 1959, January 1950-December 1959, January 1960-December 1969, January 1970-June 1982). I intend to have an article on the N&W Magazine in the Arrow when these are ready. Since they are rather large files, and generally speaking, CD/DVD drives in computers are going away, we are looking at providing these on flash drives.
> 
> Anyway, an overlong answer to a short question, but there is a lot more effort to make these usable for folks than simply tossing them out there.
> 
> Best
> Ken Miller
> 
>> On Feb 14, 2021, at 3:04 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Some years ago if I recall correctly, there was talk of putting the N&W magazines on DVD the way the annual reports were.
>> Is this something that is still in the oven?
>> I went through my June 1949 magazine and was surprised at the sections for the divisions.
>> The magazine was very personal with the men and women and family members of the Norfolk & Western.
>> Would be a great collection to have and read..
>> 
>> 
>> Jeff Wood
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