Dear Friends Of Rumcar News
Since I have taken over as editor of RCN, I have been sent by Tony Marshall the digital masters of various of the issues that he produced. From these I have been trying to rebuild the magazines to build a digital archive in both the original desk top publishing format and in pdf format, which will be accessible for longer.
The problem with the files I have been sent is that many only give me half of the magazine, as the way Tony and Lynn produced the magazine was that half was on one computer, and the other half was on another computer, as putting it all on one computer firstly was too big for the computer ram size, and secondly it allowed them to print the magazine on two A3 printers at the same time, speeding up the printing process.
The other problem is, that while you are working on the magazine all the images are not held in the main file but read the image files. But when complete you save it all by embedding the images and fonts before you send it to the printer. As Tony was doing the printing, this was not always done, so with a lot of the files I have, they have the words, and the layout, but the fancy fonts used are missing, along with most of the images. This means to rebuild the editions each page has to be rebuilt, by finding or rescanning the images, and finding and resetting all the text in the right font and point size. For 32 pages, rebuilding one edition can take up to 50 hrs. For some issues I have taken a copy from my archive and just scanned the page and pasted it into place, . This is very easy and quick, but does not produce such a clear text or bright colour images for the pictures. It also ends up a bigger file size. Other pags I have completely retyped the text. I have tried optical character recognition, and was impressed with the results. Between producing the four magazine issues a year, I try and rebuild four old issues, dependent upon which ones Jean has run out of, and which ones have been requested.
My long term aim is to have all the magazines available in pdf format, so Jean does not need to hold any paper copies at all. From the pdf copy our printer will print off single copies on request, so we can then provide back issues on demand, either printed paper copies or digital copies.
As you will appreciate re-establishing the archive in a digital format is a slow process. We have a few issues from the 70's, all of the 80's none of the 90's and half of the 100's and all of the 110's. Pre 75 there are no digital masters so they will have to be scanned copies into digital.
You can imagine that if Jean was to hold 10 printed copies of each back issue with 120 issues to date, the stock of back issues would be 1200 copies, each worth about £4, would mean a stock value of say £4800. Stock on the ground takes up space and costs money. Take into consideration that with a magazine that is 30 years old, the early copies will have been sitting for 30 years waiting to be sold which again is funds that could have been earning interest in a bank.
I am certain that the long term plan is sustainable, and allows for the fact that in years to come printed paper copies may well be a curiosity, much like the 78 rpm record is today.
If only I could devote all my waking hours to running the magazine, but unfortunately work and home life get in the way.
I hope that answers some of your questions.
Chris Thomas
Rumcar News