Progress Report

[Bob Jefferson]

Dear fellow amateur historians

It is now 5 months or so since some of us bought a pass for the Scotsman digital archive. I took the 6 month option which gave me a further 6 months free.

Since we have all just being doing our own thing, I thought it might be useful to get some feedback on your research to date and to think about how we might be able to use this information.

We know for example that Rathbone has researched the show people of Portobello and an article based on this has already appeared in the Portobello Reporter.

Poppy has been working on a top secret project and we are all eagerly awaiting her published findings.

I have 176 clippings, mostly concerning Portobello's public parks and the Rosefield and Brightons area. I'm planning a short documentary film on the Figgate Burn for Portobelly Telly so will be making use of some of the stuff I've found for that. I would also like to write up an account of everything I have discovered about Porty's parks to publish on the website.

We already have a history section on the site, though at present it just has a short introductory piece, so we can add our articles there.

So can we get some feedback please? What have you been researching? What do you plan to do next? Would you like to write something up based on your findings for publication?

[rathbone]

I now have 283 pages of accumulated notes on The Marine Gardens and 124 pages on Portobello Beach. Just about to move on to Bath Street. The Show People item was also a considerably bigger item (i.e. 48 pages) than the severely edited article which appeared in the Reporter.

As Bob knows, I have suggested we set up a History Forum, if just to enable me to off-load this stuff on a suspecting public. If the 'history section' can be used for that, fine, but unless we can keep things in clearly defined threads (i.e. Public Parks; Beach; Marine Gardens etc) then it could become confusing.

[Poppy]

My problem (well, one of many!!), is that I don't know how to edit the clippings cos they do tend to go on and on and on with often just a wee bit relevant to the subject of search? I just tried using the Text View but although it's highly amusing to see some the 'typos' some of is just gibberish and it would take ages to retype properly.

Any help out there, please?

BTW, Mr Jefferson, while we're making cheeky remarks about un-met expectations, where's my secret login you promised me re Shop Front??

[Bob Jefferson]

Poppy, I just save anything that looks promising to my clippings. You may want to add specific quotes but surely you don't intend to copy out vast tracts of text? Generally it's more a case of reading the stuff through and using that source material to create your own original work. Or have I misunderstood your point?

It's also possible of course to save articles (or sections thereof) as images and paste them into a Word document, a PowerPoint presentation, a web page or even use them as part of a film, as I intend.

Re Shop Front, I haven't forgotten about this. Paul is about to unveil a new text editor facility that will replace our current content management system. Soon as this is in place I'll be in touch.

[Poppy]

It's also possible of course to save articles (or sections thereof) as images

How, dear Bob??

[Bob Jefferson]

Just right-click and 'Save Picture as' a .png file on your destop. Then open it with whatever you normally use to edit pictures. If you have XP you could use Microsoft Photo Premium 10 which comes bundled. What you will find is that long articles are broken down into several images. So if you right-click and save at the top of the article you might just get the headline and the first para. Right-clicking a little lower down will get you the next section and so on. It is possible to stitch back together the whole article as one image if you so desire, but more likely you will just want to select a particular piece which you can do by cropping the image. You can also resize and even clean up the image.

Give me a call if you need some help.

[Poppy]

Thanks, Bob. Will try tomorrow, as absolutely exhausted with the avatar business tonight!!!

[rathbone]

it's more a case of reading the stuff through and using that source material to create your own original work.

Poppy, Bob is spot on. I tend to work with the Scotsman Archive on one side of the screen and a 'document' on the other. I usually read the article through then put down the gist of it in my own words in the document as I go along. It's surprising how quickly the stuff builds up (and how full of typos my writing is!)

[Poppy]

it's more a case of reading the stuff through and using that source material to create your own original work.

Poppy, Bob is spot on. I tend to work with the Scotsman Archive on one side of the screen and a 'document' on the other. I usually read the article through then put down the gist of it in my own words in the document as I go along. It's surprising how quickly the stuff builds up (and how full of typos my writing is!)

Must be my legal background from work where 'gist of it' is a bit of a no-no coming through at home !!!!

[rathbone]

Och, Gists are alright provided you keep a record of the original source should forensic evidence be required

[Poppy]

Och, Gists are alright provided you keep a record of the original source should forensic evidence be required

Not that sort of legal work!!

[paulw]

I have not had time to read through all of this so i'm sorry if this is old news.

As i work for the university i have full access to http://www.scran.ac.uk

This is the digital image archive for the Scotsman and others. There are 1039 images/digital media/maps/drawings related to Portobello on this site. 1000s more for east coast.

Let me know what you're looking for and i'll download it if it exists.

cheers

[Bob Jefferson]

As long as you check that there aren't copyright restrictions then feel free to email me anything you think might be of interest. As it is restricted access, I don't think direct links will work.