Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Zirunel

No, not at all, that wasn't the comparison I meant to draw. What I meant was that compiling a new work like Ivory Bindings would be a major undertaking for the Foundation, considering that until now they have played it safe and limited their ambitions to marketing reformats or scans of the Professor's own finished works.

I may be anticipating your next question, but yes, I did offer a copy of my archives to the Foundation for their use. They were not interested, they told me.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

You managed it by 1) working your ass off and 2) being enthusiastic enough to get other people enthusiastic too, and they helped.

Was your good lady there the night Phil announced his plans for our doing a WorldCon masquerade presentation? It would have been the early fall of '86, after the Pettingers took "Best in Show' with the Lords of Stability. (They took another in 1996 with the Lords of Change, too.) We got some nice cookies in 1988, too...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yes; a good friend who knows software has come up with a way to search the files. I am not a software expert; all I know is that when you ask the program for something, it tells you everything that Phil said or wrote on the subject. The big problem is the artwork; we have literally hundreds of pieces of art, all of which needs to be identified, sorted, and labelled. Think of it as being handed the Library of Congress, and told to come up with an index from scratch without knowing what a lot of the books actually are.

Yes, a lot of it are the notes and sketches that Phil did for me at the game table. (*) The rule was that I got a copy, and he got the original. We also have a lot of unpublished stuff in hard copy form, like the 1987 'Who's Who' lists. It's doable; it's just going to take time and be - quite frankly - a labor of love.

(*) EDIT: I should have also said that this material includes photos, video tapes, and audio tapes as well. Sorry.

The thing that concerns me about an index is that if you take a small self- contained piece like, say The Temple of Sarku article, it probably has scores or even a couple of hundred terms that would qualify as index entries. Multiply that by the whole archive, and you end up with a task that may not be practical. At that point you are researching the collection, not just describing it, and I think the priority should be to make it manageable and searchable for future research, rather than researching it in detail from the get-go.

If it was me, I would treat it like a museum collection. Catalogue it, rather than indexing it, and in fact, I would break it up into several collections (searchable digital vs maps and sketches vs photographs vs documents). Just like a museum would: a catalogue of van Goghs paintings would be separate from the catalogue of his written correspondence, because they have different cataloguing requirements.

You know, in my work I finish the average season with thousands of photographs, pieces of video, tens of thousands of objects, hand-drawn maps, field notes and sketches, a variety of other records, all of which has to be ordered and catalogued in a matter of months so that it can all be searched, consulted and drawn together to complete a coherent report within a year. Yes, we have people working full-time on this as we speak, it's a big job.

You don't have that luxury. But I might have some ideas for you on cataloguing and data management. We can discuss via email if you like.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I may be anticipating your next question, but yes, I did offer a copy of my archives to the Foundation for their use. They were not interested, they told me.

Did you get the feeling it was that they were actually not interested or just concerned that they would owe you compensation for anything they profited from?
I get the feeling that sharing it not something they do easily. Just a guess of course, as I have no direct knowledge.
=

Originally Posted by Zirunel

And yes about the "very good writer." Ivory Bindings, or Crystal Bindings, whatever, would have to live up to Ebon Bindings or go down in flames. Especially if it was mostly new content and lacked the authority of received wisdom from the Professor, it would have to be better than good.

And Ebon Bindings is the Professor at his most immersive, erudite, and masterful. That would be a damn tough act to follow

I'm starting to suspect that my random demons table isn't really adequate.

(Which I knew from the get go, make no mistake).
Then again, it's an example of what we all have to do when dealing with Tekumel. We can't get the full picture in the Professor's head, for legal and logistical reasons. We'll just have to settle for "good enough", and remember that "the best is enemy of the good".

And some day, we might get access to those files. Who knows?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Especially considering what source materials in his personal collection of Indo-Persian medieval manuscripts and Ancient Egyptian texts that he had. This was literally a university-quality library; the gentleman who eventually bought it donated it to found a university library - rather like with Phil and the Ames Library at the U of MN.

No doubt Phil Barker would have approved!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Agreed! It took the Missus, assisted by Third and Fourth Daughters, the better part of two years just to copy / scan. It took another two years to do the same with what was in my personal collection, which covered a lot of the holes in Phil's where he hadn't gotten a copy of something over the years. At the moment, the digital version of the archive is up to somewhere around 62 to 64 Gigabytes of data. A big part of my work over the past four years has been to simply open a file, look at the text, and put it in a folder about that subject. (Basically the filing system used by Dr. R. V. Jones, in his work during WWII. Churchill liked it, and it does work.) Indexing will follow. I favor the Pitt-Rivers methodology, where everything pertaining to a subject is organized by that subject in chronological order. Yes, you do wind up with duplicate texts in different folders, but that is the way Phil worked.

Any suggestions?

First, I thought you mean 60+ Gigabytes of text, and almost fainted.
Then I remembered you have video and audio as well, and felt better.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I may be anticipating your next question, but yes, I did offer a copy of my archives to the Foundation for their use. They were not interested, they told me.

...maybe you don't want to speculate about their motives, but I really can't imagine them (unless you wanted them to pay for the scanning - but knowing you, I suspect that wasn't the case).
I mean, where's the hurt in having a more complete digital archive? I've got more books and movies than that for my hobbies on my hard drives.

Originally Posted by Zirunel

I rather liked your demon generator. As I recall, you have it on a blog? Could you repost the link please? I would like to see it again.

The thing about equalling Ebon Bindings is, cool sharetlyal are very very important, but it is also the sorcerous context, anecdotes and evocative text that make Ebon Bindings so special. Hard to match the Professor there.

The link is on my blog, yes.

And yes, the details of the summoning rites are my bane as well. I need to read more anthropology studies.

Originally Posted by Zirunel

The thing that concerns me about an index is that if you take a small self- contained piece like, say The Temple of Sarku article, it probably has scores or even a couple of hundred terms that would qualify as index entries. Multiply that by the whole archive, and you end up with a task that may not be practical. At that point you are researching the collection, not just describing it, and I think the priority should be to make it manageable and searchable for future research, rather than researching it in detail from the get-go.

If it was me, I would treat it like a museum collection. Catalogue it, rather than indexing it, and in fact, I would break it up into several collections (searchable digital vs maps and sketches vs photographs vs documents). Just like a museum would: a catalogue of van Goghs paintings would be separate from the catalogue of his written correspondence, because they have different cataloguing requirements.

You know, in my work I finish the average season with thousands of photographs, pieces of video, tens of thousands of objects, hand-drawn maps, field notes and sketches, a variety of other records, all of which has to be ordered and catalogued in a matter of months so that it can all be searched, consulted and drawn together to complete a coherent report within a year. Yes, we have people working full-time on this as we speak, it's a big job.

You don't have that luxury. But I might have some ideas for you on cataloguing and data management. We can discuss via email if you like.

I would really appreciate that! My only -and admittedly limited - experience with this comes from a fascination with Howard Carter's excavations, and from watching a lot of "Time Team". My software expert has done the work to make the actual indexing and cataloging work - the computer replaces the clerks, as it were. We had just gotten to the very basics of what a 'museum' might be and how it might work when I had my brain bleed and First Daughter had First Grandson. Everything;s been on hold since then, and in a holding pattern.

One example of this 'museum' approach has been the mannequins; we read that these are the best way to display costumes, to the Missus (The Queen Of The Internet) got us ten at very good prices.

I can send you what we've got for draft documents on this. Drop me an e-mil, if you could.