[Leica] Informal LHSA Survey

[davison_m at msn.com (MARK DAVISON)]

Marc James Small has asked

>I would appreciate those LHSA members on the LUG to e-mail me privately and 
>to advise whether or not they possess a DVD drive on their computer.  
><marcsmall@comcast.net>  Your answers will be held in confidence:  I am 
>simply trying to build a statistical base.


I would also appreciate it if those same LHSA members on the LUG would let 
me know what your experience with the Viewfinder DVD was.  In particular:

1) did you experience difficulty using the archive because you had no DVD 
reader? If so, did you buy and install a DVD reader?
2) do you have a Mac or a PC, and which operating system do you use? (e.g. 
Windows 98, Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.4, etc.)
3) if you were able to read the DVD, did you find the content useful?
4) do you use the archive from the DVD, or did you copy it onto a hard 
drive?
5) did you need to purchase a DVD reader to use the archive?

For non LHSA members a word of explanation:  the LHSA is the Leica 
Historical Society of America, which originally started as an association of 
Leica collectors, but has grown to be a group of general Leica enthusiasts.  
LHSA publishes a quarterly journal, the Viewfinder, which contains both 
historical articles (on old equipment, Leica corporate history and 
photography with Leicas) as well as reviews of current equipment and 
articles on general photographic practice. In addition LHSA sponsors two 
gatherings: a spring shoot, and a fall general meeting. These gatherings 
include a variety of talks, some historical, and some purely photographic.  
The fall meetings usually feature at least one talk by a professional Leica 
photographer of some distinction.  You can read more about LHSA at 
www.lhsa.org.

Recently LHSA issued a DVD-ROM containing an electronic archive of all the 
back issues of Viewfinder in a single volume.  Each issue is represented by 
a single .pdf file (which is Adobe's portable document format.) The .pdf 
files contain scanned facsimiles of the original pages, in order to preserve 
the text layout and illustrations of the articles.  Behind the facsimile 
image there is searchable, selectable text which was created by using 
optical character recognition.

With the archive on a single DVD, the electronic text allows the user to 
search the entire contents of the archive using search tools provided in 
Adobe Reader.

In addition, putting the archive of a single DVD allows the use of hyperlink 
facilities within the .pdf standard to create hyperlinks from an topical 
index to the indvidual .pdf files.

The archive DVD is currently available for no additional charge as a benefit 
of membership in the LHSA. I have spent quite a few hours reading through 
the archive, because as member of the volunteer development team which 
created the archive I had to double check the quality of the scanning and 
OCR work. There are some fascinating articles, and sometimes I had to pull 
myself away from reading them to get on with my testing.


I think this archive is so much fun, it is worth the price of a year's LHSA 
membership ($55) just to get it. If you have a Windows XP computer without a 
DVD drive, you should be able to upgrade to one for less than $50.

The archive does require that you have a computer with a DVD-ROM reader, as 
well as the capability of  running the Adobe Reader application, version 6.0 
or above.

These system requirements are dictated by the technologies involved, but the 
use of a multi-platform (Mac and PC) commercially supported hypertext 
facility (Adobe .pdf) should make it possible to enjoy the Viewfinder 
archive for decades. The disks themselves have been pressed from a master 
(rather than electronically duplicated onto dye-based writable DVDs) so they 
should enjoy the same durability as commercial video DVDs.

Mark Davison
Membership Chair and member of the Viewfinder archive working group, LHSA