Converting PDFs to Editable Text

 Or something like that.  We have about 58 (could be 57) PDF files of addresses given at Carnegie Hall in the 19th and 20th NYSEC seasons.   I have long wanted to convert them to something more readable and/or editable.  As the texts currently exist, they appear to be carbon copies of typed scripts.  The paper is yellowed with age, but it also seems to be a thin onion skin.  The carbon paper had, no doubt, been used several times already, hence the slightly blurred type.  The scans sometimes showed folded pages--obscuring text--and frequently were tilted to some greater or lesser degree from the horizontal.  To be honest--if also a tad biased--it's just not comfortable to read these texts.

I tried to convert the PDFs to Word files, so that they might be a bit more readable.  This was the result:

Not only was this even worse for reading, it was not going to be usable if we wanted to consider print publication.  

So I tried another method to create readable text:  Dictation.  Reading aloud to MS Word, I applied clear diction to spoken punctuation and formatting instructions and managed to read an entire address into Word.  This was much better.  It took awhile to figure out the command "lingo" (Word wants to hear "new line" rather than "paragraph").  The process was somewhat tiring.  Some measure of proofreading and reformatting would still be needed, but the outcome was readable.

Then my grandson asked "Why don't you just retype it?"  So I tried that, too.  Although I'm not a trained typist, I have gained some speed over the years, and I managed to retype about 4 pages in an hour. Retyping was, in my mind, the easier and more productive (less tiring) way to get a readable text (more attractive to the contemporary reader).  Even more important, retyping into a word processing program such as Word allows for easier copyediting and reformatting for print and online publication.

With that bit of "research," the project had to sit on the back burner while other projects took priority.  Eventually I was asked to talk about some of one of those projects for a Sunday gathering of the Ethical Society of Austin.  I presented:  "The Big Dig:  Delving into the History of Thought in Ethical Culture." Some of my talk was about online repositories of digital books and journals, but most of it was about the Bibliography of Ethical Culture.  I tossed out tidbits of (to me) fascinating information that I had been discovering as I worked on the Bibliography, and I took every opportunity to highlight points at which many hands could make the work light.  The good news?  Three new partners in the work!

For now the exciting news is that one of those partners, an excellent typist, will help pull the Carnegie Hall Project off of the back burner and get to work on giving us some new typescripts to work with.  Stay tuned.

Finding Matthew Ies Spetter

 

Matthew Ies Spetter

A few weeks ago, while visiting the New York Society for Ethical Culture (NYSEC), I had an opportunity to work with an archive box that I had previously "rescued" from the basement.  The basement area in which archives are stored is due for renovation, and there are ongoing discussions about where and how to store the archived materials now located there.  While "rescue" is too strong a term for my action, I did take the opportunity that presented itself to me to carry the box from the basement to the new "office" for the Archives Team in Room 406B at NYSEC for further study.  

What prompted this rather audacious act was the label on the box:  "Matthew Ies Spetter, Platforms 1970-1978."  I recognized the name and wanted to know more about this man who fought in the Dutch Resistance during World War II, survived Auschwitz, and became an Ethical Culture Leader when he immigrated to the US.  Who wouldn't?

The box contained 83 mimeographed platforms presented at the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture (RYSEC).  The platforms were published by RYSEC for distribution to subscribers in a serial called simply The Platform.   (There were also 5 or 6 typescripts of speeches given elsewhere or drafts of the later platforms in the box.)  One of the basic tasks in working with the archives is to document what we have.  I have done just that, and all of the platforms in that box that were published in The Platform are now listed in the Bibliography of Ethical Culture.  The same list plus the typescripts has been prepared for inclusion in the archive box as an inventory of its contents.  Since Spetter served as leader for RYSEC, there are likely to be many more platforms to be documented, but, first, we'll have to find them.

Fortunately, there are also a number of platforms given by Spetter at NYSEC.  When he retired from RYSEC, Spetter became a part-time leader at NYSEC.  Many of these were published in The Ethical Platform, NYSEC's in-house serial.  More about those in another post.

Now we come to another basic task for this work:  digitization.  Digitization--or scanning--is a much more time-consuming aspect of the work, but it is needful since so much of the past work of leaders and thinkers in the Movement is out of print or unpublished or no longer being sold.  By digitizing these works, we can store them in offsite (or in the cloud) locations, which protects against the loss of items for which there are only one or a few copies.  

One further benefit of digitization is the possibility of making the work accessible to a wider audience.  Right now, unless RYSEC has the means to have a reading or lending library, these particular platforms cannot be seen by the general membership.  Once they are digitized, they can be stored on a website or drive that is accessible to members.  

There are a lot of steps yet to complete before that can happen, but the process has begun.  We have requested permission from RYSEC to post these platforms online once we have scanned them.  We still have to do the scanning, set up the online storage repository, and develop policies for access, but we have a tentative target of May 15, 2025, to have something ready for member, if not public, access.  May 15, 2025, will mark the beginning of the 150th year since the Ethical Culture Movement was founded.  We will have a lot of reading to catch up on before the 150th anniversary rolls around!

On the Dating of Adler's Platforms

I've just made a personal "joke," reminding myself of an incredibly minor article that I once published entitled "On the Dating of Utendi wa Ayubu."  The joke is as minor as the article, so I will leave it with the wry smirk that issues do seem to repeat themselves.  Today's repetition has to do with dating, as in "when was that publicly presented?"

I'm working on one piece of the project that I have named the Carnegie Hall Project.  We possess digitized copies of typescripts from two seasons of platforms presented at Carnegie Hall, and they are the current focus of some effort that will make them available online in the foreseeable future.  In the process of examining these files (digital only--the hard copies are still unlocated), I have discovered some "interesting" aspects of the dating of these documents.

First, Adler stated in his Founding Address that the Ethical Society would meet on Sundays.  He offered reasons that made sense at the time, and most Ethical Societies these days do hold their primary weekly meetings on Sundays, usually in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon.

Second, indications from the New York Times coverage of these meetings in the 1890s indicates that NYSEC (and presumably the other early Societies) held their meetings in seasons which seemed to coincide roughly with the academic year.  If I understand correctly, the typical season began on the third Sunday in October and ended on the second (or third) Sunday in May, on which an anniversary speech would often be given.

The Carnegie Hall lectures for which we have digitized copies were given during the 1894-1895--or Nineteenth--Season, ending with the 19th Anniversary Address and the 1895-1896--or Twentieth--Season, ending with the 20th Anniversary Address.  (That sentence was harder to write than it might seem.)

Now, comparing a calendar for 1894 to the list of typescripts, I see that the first typescript is for November 4, so, if the season did begin in October, we are missing the record of the third and fourth Sundays.  (Did something happen to delay the season?  Are these records lost?)  I am also finding some potential for error in the use of calendars generated online (AI goofs?).  My "old reliable" yearly calendar template from Vertex gave 1894 dates a couple of days off, so I mistakenly developed a "theory" about all of the typescripts being dated as they were typed (on Tuesdays!) and not according to when the lectures were delivered.  (Oops! And that was a couple of hours wasted.)  A comparison to an image of a calendar printed in 1894 (thanks, Smithsonian!) set me straight--and serves as reminder that tracking the seasons for these early years of Ethical Culture can also be easier said than done.

Part of the Carnegie Hall Project is not only to publish (online or otherwise) the two seasons for which we have digital copies, but to locate the remaining seasons, running from 1893 to 1910.  One resource that I am looking at right now (because it is online, and I am in Texas) is the list of Finding Aids for the Felix Adler Papers at Columbia University.  Using 1893 and 1894 calendars, I am trying to track down any platforms that may be housed at Columbia with dates in the range of Season 18, the first season for lectures at Carnegie Hall.  I have managed to locate a few documents from that season, but in what format and whether actually delivered as addresses at Carnegie Hall needs further research.  Some of the files indicate dates ("Science and Ethics," April 22, 1894) but others give only the year or a month and the year.  Moreover, the documents listed comprise only half of the possible dates for Season 18, so there still remains the need (hope) to find more information in the NYSEC archives.  This whole process will be quite tedious--no joke!--but I believe it will be worth it to have a better understanding of these years at Carnegie Hall both for historical reasons but also for our contemporary Ethical consideration.  Issues do repeat themselves, and that's no joke either.