UFO loose ends : Help near Washington, help scanning microfilms and help with apps?

As some of you may know, I quit UFO research in December 2016 (see Zazzafrazz’s thread “Isaac Koi to leave UFOlogy after Ted Roe NARCAP allegedly threatens to expose his anonymity”. I would, however, like to tie up at least some loose ends so am currently writing a UFO thread to share some of the UFO collections / projects I had been working on. Other people can then take forward any of those projects if they wish.

The (final?) UFO thread I'm planning about various loose ends is now likely to include the largest collections of UFO material I've helped share, by a considerable margin.

Basically, I want to end on a high note by sharing a big pile of stuff.

However, I'll need some help when writing my wrap-up thread to maximise the amount of material to be made freely available online. As usual, I’m working with the AFU in Sweden and others (e.g. Barry Greenwood in the USA) to get material scanned, but some extra assistance is needed with a few of the loose ends.

So, as outlined below, I’d be grateful for some help. In particular:

(1) SECTION 1 : HELP NEAR WASHINGTON, DC : I’m rather keen to find a volunteer to check a particular set of files (and, ideally, scan any significant pages – possibly using one of the mobile telephone scanning apps referred to in Section 3 below) at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. (Maps and further details are given below).

(2) SECTION 2 : HELP SCANNING MICROFILMS : Assistance getting some rolls of microfilm scanned in the USA would be very useful. Okay, when I say “some” rolls I mean quite a few. Ideally, hundreds. (However, I’d settle for at least getting some of the higher priority rolls scanned and, of course, the microfilms don’t all have to be scanned by the same person/group…).

(3) SECTION 3 : HELP WITH SCANNING APPS : I would like a few volunteers for some brief tests of at least one scanning app. Does anyone happen to have a smart phone or tablet with a camera, plus a few minutes free?

(4) SECTION 4 : POSTSCRIPT


For those unfamiliar with my reasons for wishing to increase the amount of ufological source material freely available online, I’ve explained some of my thinking in my previous items about:

(a) the desirability of making UFO source documents and publications freely available online in an attempt to improve the quality of UFO research, e.g. my thread FAST searching of major free online collections of UFO journals (or just browse/download them). As I have written elsewhere, the more easily available we make source material (for free), the less excuse there will be for researchers continuing to fail to go back to the source material rather than simply regurgitating/copying accounts in previous UFO books.

(b) other searchable PDF archives I've helped make available for anyone to freely download, such as UFO documents from the FBI (see FBI: “discs recovered”, Air Force “greatly concerned”, “at a complete loss” + more memos"), from Canada with the permission of the Canadian government (see Canadian disclosure: “UFO Found” and other documents/photos and Canadian PDFs – “At no time should it be made available to the public” + more official memos), Australia, with the permission of the Australian government (see, for example, Oz X-Files : “authenticated sighting”, “appear to be inexplicable”, USA “very interested" and New Zealand (see New Zealand X-Files : Official “fib”, superiors “mystified”, + Kaikoura “whitewash”), plus various out-of-print UFO publications (see, for example, Phil Klass: "Skeptics UFO Newsletter" now online (large collection) and about 30 other UFO magazine/journal collections).

SECTION 1 : HELP NEAR WASHINGTON

I’m rather keen to find a volunteer to check a particular set of files (and, ideally, scan any significant pages possibly using one of the mobile telephone scanning apps referred to in Section 3 below) at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

In fact, two volunteers may be better since it would probably be more productive to have two people visit at the same time – not to mention more interesting for the volunteer(s).

As I said in Section 6 of my thread “Massive UFO disclosure in USA : A challenge for ATS” in 2011, “There are significant gaps in Air Force FOIA documentation available on its website and via other official websites”. I think I may have identified a set of files which fill at least a few of those gaps.

I understand that the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, are a relatively short journey from central Washington DC.
www.google.co.uk...@38.9301763,-77.0536367,12.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xffa479bee4a17d24!8m2!3d38.9 982776!4d-76.9611869

National Archives at College Park
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001
Phone: 301-837-3510
Fax: 301-837-1752
Email: [email protected]



I have been in touch with the National Archives and understand that:

(1) As in our national archives in the UK, visitors to the National Archives at College Park can take a camera (or tablet computer or smart phone with a built-in camera) to take photographs of documents:
www.archives.gov...
www.archives.gov...

(2) As in our national archives in the UK, visitors to the National Archives at College Park can get a research card on their first visit, so you do not need to go made a separate initial visit solely to get a research card:
www.archives.gov...

(3) Unlike in our national archives in the UK, there isn't a system in the National Archives at College Park for arranging to get a first batch of records pulled from storage prior to a visit. However, I’ve been told by the National Archives that records are usually available “about an hour” after the pull-time.

I’ll provide further details to the volunteer(s).

SECTION 2 : HELP SCANNING MICROFILMS

Back in 2014, I posted a thread ( RARE microfilms of UFO documents now online – APRO, US Air Force etc (PDF archives) about work by UFO researcher Steven Kaeser had done to make several interesting and important UFO microfilms available to view free of charge on his website as the start of a new digitisation project. The initial microfilms werer a reel of APRO files in relation to sightings prior to 1957, a Canadian government UFO microfilm and a microfilm used to exchange information between the USAF Public Relations Office and Project Blue Book. Steve Kaesar kindly worked with me to create downloadable copies of the files as searchable PDF files, with Russian researcher Mikhail Gershtein providing very useful assistance in relation to enhancement of the images.

Since then, I’ve been in touch with some UFO researchers holding large numbers of rolls who are willing to have the material scanned and made freely available online.

I’d like to push this project forward. So, can we find help to get rolls of microfilms scanned?



The relevant microfilms are rather varied. They contain a lot of official UFO documents and also a lot of newspaper clippings etc. The micofilms are also rather numerous. We are talking about several hundred rolls.

Some of the relevant documents are online, but with redactions and/or on websites that claim a copyright over their scans. I’d prefer to make scans available that can be freely shared. I’d also like to get versions online without the annoying black bits.

I’ve previously mentioned that the Project Blue Book files on Fold3 are scans of a set of redacted microfilms. FUFOR and others worked with Rebecca Wise a few years ago to get some (unfortunately, currently incomplete) copies of the unredacted microfilms online on the bluebookarchive.org website. They are still working on completing that set, but I’d like to speed up progress and make quite a few other microfilms online as well.

For example, a set of the index pages for Project Blue Book with redactions can be downloaded from here:
app.box.com...



The redactions of names etc in those index pages is a bit of a pain when trying to investigate cases further (although the redactions were rather sloppy so it was often possible to read relevant names in the files) but it’s a lot less work to use unredacted versions without those annoying black bits... For example, the same sample page shown above is shown again below but this time without the annoying black bits:

app.box.com...



Over the years, I’ve found it increasingly amusing that some elements of the UFO community moan loudly about the government failing to release UFO documents but then fail to do anything to make those documents which are released freely available online (not to mention failing to analyse those documents…).

SECTION 3 : HELP WITH SCANNING APPS

I'm looking for a few guinea pigs to try out a free scanning app, to see how easy a few people find it to download and use to scan a few documents/periodicals using their smart phone or tablet.

I've had a couple of other people try out one app that has had good reviews: one person got pretty good results, but the other obtained rather disappointing results (both using iPhones). So, I'd like a slightly larger sample size of tests on various devices.

The app that, after a bit of online reading, I've focused upon is ScanBot - partly because it is available for Android and iOS products and the basic product (which I think is all that anyone needs) is free. While there are commercial upgrades, I'm keen to just test the free version. (If I am going to ask volunteers to install an app, I think it has to be free). So, please _don't_ upgrade to a paid version of this app (e.g. to do OCR, which can be done on a PC by me) for the purposes of this test.

Here is the relevant Android link for the free Scanbot on the Google Playstore:
play.google.com...

And here is the relevant iPhone link for the free Scanbot on the iTunes app store:
itunes.apple.com...

It would be great if a few volunteers could just install this free app on their own device and try it out to scan a few random pages of documents/periodicals (ideally sending a few samples to me via email or Wetransfer.com etc, with an indication of the device used).



I'm particularly interested in how easy you find it to install/use and how good the results are using your particular device.

Any app I recommend to people that volunteer to visit relevant archives needs to be easy to install and use. (I realise that the results of such an app may not be up to the usual standards of scans of UFO material by, say, the AFU - but there is a balance to be struck between ease of use on freely available equipment by volunteers in different places or getting no volunteers at all...).

If this works well (and my initial tests at home on a new Android mobile telephone have been pretty promising), I can think of a few interesting possibilities which I’ll outline in my next (final?) item. I have in mind seeking volunteers around the world to visit various archives and photograph/scan specified documents / periodicals. In particular:

(1) From my research so far, there are various government files that I think probably contain UFO documents that aren't currently available online on government websites or UFO websites. A few of the relevant documents are likely to rather interesting. (I’m hoping that the help sought in Section 1 above will provide some material to illustrate this point…).

(2) There are some gaps in periodicals held by the AFU and the other archives that have kindly co-operated with me so far. I've identified a few archives which may hold additional issues of relevant publications. Some of those periodicals are of considerable significance to the history of ufology, so I'd like to fill in the gaps.

As most of you probably know, back in 1999, the Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group included an attempt to outline the content of various UFO archives in several universities and in the hands of private UFO groups/researchers. Those Proceedings are online at:
www.project1947.com...

Since 1999, a number of guides to relevant collections have been made available online by some of the relevant universities and others.

As a basic tool, a while back I created searchable PDFs containing details of relevant archives (mainly in universities) found using the ArchiveGrid website that John Reed helpfully drew to my attention a while ago. That search engine can be found at: beta.worldcat.org...

The 4 PDF files at the link below contain details of 322 archives found as a result of a search for "ufo OR ufos OR unidentified flying object OR unidentified flying objects":
app.box.com...

I've also started a directory online storing inventories of various UFO document collection.

My preliminary work in 2014 resulted in a directory which includes entries for collections relating to the groups and individuals listed below.

AFU
Aldrich, Jan
Allende, Carlos
Barker, Gray
Bloecher, Ted
Bott, Murray
Bray, Arthur
Carr, Robert Spencer
Chalker, Bill
CISU
Condon, Edward
Connors, Wendy
Craig, Roy
CUFOS
Davidson, Leon
Fawcett, George
Fontes, Olavos
Fuller, John
Greenwood, Barry
Gross, Loren
Hill, Paul
Hynek, J Allen
Jones, William E
Keyhoe, Donald
Klass, Philip
Mancusi, Bruno
Mcdonald, James
Menzel, Donald
Paijmans, Theo
Pflock, Karl
Pickett, Jack
Roach, Franklin
Ruppelt, Edward
Sagan, Carl
Salisbury, Frank
Sanderson, Ivan T
Scully, Frank
Sprinkle, Leo
Swords, Michael
Tulien, Thomas
Ufodex
Webb, Jack
Williamson, George Hunt

If you'd like to browse these entries then you can see the current state of play online at:
app.box.com...



I've uploaded a zipped version of that (basic, but expanding) directory to the temporary link below:
we.tl...

SECTION 4 : POSTSCRIPT

Mr Koi,
If I didn't know better
I'd say It seems like you are back

I'm Blown away by the size of this project.
I've built dams that require less work!

Edit: If you have any need for anything done in Canada - research, images, witness accounts etc...I'd Happily offer any help I could contribute.

originally posted by: Macenroe82
If you have any need for anything done in Canada - research, images, witness accounts etc...I'd Happily offer any help I could contribute.

Well, since you mention it...



Loose ends I have in relation to Canada include:

(a) Seeking permission from Lawrence Fenwick to make his Canadian UFO Research Network ("CUFORN") freely available online. A lot of work clearly went into that publication in the 1980s and 1990s. I sent an email for Larry Fenwick to a "Fenwick Enterprises" in Canada (hopefully the one mention on Larry's LinkedIn page), without any response.
www.linkedin.com...
www.fenwickenterprises.ca...

(b) I'd like permission from John Magor's family to make searchable PDF copies of his Canadian UFO Report freely available online. (That publication was continued as "Journal UFO" by Dave Haisell, which I've made available online with Dave's kind permission).

(c) Seeking permission from Bonnie Wheeler to make the Cambridge UFO Research Group Newsletter freely available online. (She is the former editor of that publication). I'm not even sure she is still alive. I've asked a few Canadian contacts, without any joy.

Any contact details for any of the above would be great.

(I'd also like permission from Mr X to make his Res Bureaux Bulletion available online, but I'm already in touch with him and been attempting to persuade him...).

a reply to: IsaacKoi

I'm sorry to hear about what happened. Perhaps this will just blow over in a bit? If he is threatening to expose you I don't see how he could ever expect another person who wished to remain anonymous to come forward.

I tried the app on my android device. I was in low light conditions with an irregular background and it worked great after 2 or 3 tries to get accustomed to it.

It worked well enough that I think of keeping it to do field scanning of docs.

a reply to: IsaacKoi

Once these loose ends meet and you get the support through crowdsourcing/volunteers, this will certainly turn out to be one of the most relevant contributions to Ufology in a long time. And I agree, creating a solid base of new, previously unavailable sources would help future researchers provide new angles, data and thus new insights.

I also look forward to your thread about Larry Hatch's "U" project and the follow-up by those who can help integrate the old data into a new frontend including an up-to-date database format. These are exciting times for ufology, indeed. S+F!

a reply to: IsaacKoi

When ever you get a chance, have a look in your pm box.

originally posted by: jeep3r
I also look forward to your thread about Larry Hatch's "U" project and the follow-up by those who can help integrate the old data into a new frontend including an up-to-date database format. These are exciting times for ufology, indeed. S+F!

A few people are working on it at the moment behind the scenes. Jacques Vallee commented to me yesterday that Larry's database is "an amazing piece of work".

I'll cover links for Larry's database (in various formats) in my wrap-up thread, as part of the pile of material to be shared.

a reply to: IsaacKoi
Was excited to help until I found out you were talking about the other Washington (DC).

If there's anything in Washington state you would need help with, feel free to PM me. UFO's are one of my main areas of study.

originally posted by: underwerks
If there's anything in Washington state you would need help with, feel free to PM me. UFO's are one of my main areas of study.

Cheers.

Mmm...

Well, there are various other loose ends in relation to various UFO publications edited/published by people living in the USA - although I don't think any of them are specifically in Washington state.

I'll paste a summary below.


(1) Independent Aerial Phenomena Research:
Phillip Robertson was the editor of the "Independent Aerial Phenomena Research" newsletter. At the time of publishing his newsletter (in the late 1980s/early 1990s) he gave his address as 963 Jefferson Avenue, San Bernadino, California. Dr John Reed attempted to track down Philip Robertson for me, finding only the same address.

I haven't found Phillip Robertson. I've found emails from Jan Aldrich on various message boards trying to track him down a few years ago. I understand that Jan was never successful. No one replied openly on those message forums.

I've asked on various groups myself, without success.



(2) UFO Encounters
Michael Norris, formerly of MUFON Georgia, was editor of UFO Encounters magazine in the early 1990s. He was webmaster for the International Society for UFO Research (ISUR) later in the 1990s. Some details and photos of him are online at the link below.
web.archive.org...://www.isur.com/profiles/webmaster.html

I've asked on various groups if anyone knows him, without success.



(3) SBI Report
I've seen a few complimentary comments about the SBI Report, published by the SBI (Scientific Bureau of Investigation).

It was originally edited by Peter Mazzola and later by James (Jim) R Leming.

I understand from Dr John Reed in the USA that Peter Mazzola died several years ago. I don't have any details of his family or their contact details.

I think Jim Leming may still be around and that his Facebook page is at the link below:
www.facebook.com...

I sent a Facebook "friend" request to the above Jim Leming (hoping he is the right one) a few months ago, but didn't get any response.



(4) Probe:

Joseph L Ferriere's UFO magazine was "Probe - The Controversial Phenomena Magazine". His obituary at the link below lists family members:

www.findagrave.com...

Those family members include "Doreen Bosko", his daughter. I think I've found her on Facebook at the link below. A few weeks ago I sent her a message via her Facebook page, without any response so far. Her last post on Facebook was over a year ago.

www.facebook.com...

(Dr John Reed in the USA has provided me with an address for Doreen Bosko in Maplevill RI).

There are brief further details of this publication at:

www.facebook.com...

Nice thread, I've saved it to read later.

I tried Scanbot on my Galaxy S6 and I've sent you 2 pdf files.
Lighting conditions were not so good, but if you want I can scan more pages later when I get home and send them to you.

originally posted by: saudi
I tried Scanbot on my Galaxy S6 and I've sent you 2 pdf files.
Lighting conditions were not so good, but if you want I can scan more pages later when I get home and send them to you.

Cheers saudi.

Your images are encouraging. I think the quality looks okay. Not as good as a flat-bed scanner, but certainly usable.

Basically, I think images of further UFO documents of this quality would be a heck of a lot better than not having any images of those documents online at all...

a reply to: IsaacKoi

images of further UFO documents of this quality would be a heck of a lot better than not having any images of those documents online at all...

Yes.
And the quality can be improved a little with a better light source and a little time.

a reply to: IsaacKoi

I made an account on ATS just so I could respond to your post. I've collected and followed your work, so I'm very excited to volunteer my efforts in this.

I've downloaded the ScanBot app on an Android device and an Apple iPad, and I will be quick to review it and send in some scans.

Additionally, I'm not in Washington, but Alaska, and I would like to help with any loose ends as is needed.

Also, any information or files that you're looking to share and disseminate to dedicated researchers, I would be eager to accept. In fact, if you even have physical printed documentation and materials that you are considering parting with, I would happily pay the shipping costs to make sure it gets to useful hands.

It's still unfortunate to see you go.

I clicked thinking Washington state as well, not sure how I can help beyond; bumping this up for people who can locally help in Wash. DC to others who can overall help. Though, will check into how I can contribute. Also, sorry to see you left the research though am happy for this thread.

Thank you very much for sharing your work. It is appreciated by many.