Many people have about creating UFO databases or UFO data warehouses (the latter term having been promoted by Jacques Vallee, including in his interesting presentation in Paris in 2014 and in some related discussions I had with him at that event). However, concrete progress and results in relation to many such plans have been rather sparse.
I therefore thought it might be a good idea for me to:
(1) Share a few sample search results from searches of my own UFO data warehouse ("UFOware");
(2) Share some analysis resulting from the use of UFOware. I've been a bit wary of posting such analysis. Since some unpleasantness a few years ago involving one or two paranoid individuals, I've generally only posted raw UFO material (such as UFO newsletters, official documents etc) and related resources (such as some databases, indexes and tips in relation to searching UFO data) rather than much analysis or commentary. But I don't think that it's possible to discuss the merits of different techniques for searching/analysing UFO data completely in isolation from the results of such efforts.
(1) Results of searches in UFOware for "Ariel" in the same paragraph as "School" (to find references to the Ariel School incident in Zimbabwe):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iIkE7INaPLs8LaWaJ16X9SMgtCZvUyP2xALhzbLmaCs/edit?usp=sharing
(2) Results of searches in UFOware for "Doty" together with either "Rick" or "Richard" (to find references to Richard Doty):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AtRXb0-1LzaJQn6CcOovkm-dlmOB6vJkx9XFmM2qcGI/edit?usp=sharing
(3) Results of searches for "Pandolfi" in UFOware (to find references to Ron Pandolfi) :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XwXGyQDX-KjXFaZQYFGqMHqrA9K57GyMPsijkk2Chlo/edit?usp=sharing
(4) Searches for "Shandera" in UFOware (to find references to Bill Moore's colleague Jaime Shandera)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sxu0dHLhgKQ-og2cUK-gDNvr0n-yCpix3XZFuNgMCC8/edit?usp=sharing
I'm not sure about the value of such exported results. They do allow some relevant resources to be identified, but without sharing the underlying books/resources as well then the utility is massively reduced.
Of course, I have been seeking to share many UFO magazines/newsletters when I can get permission to to do, but getting permission to share complete books (even if they are out of print) has proven difficult.
So, unfortunately, in the sample search results it is not possible to click on each search result and see the results in context - unlike performing a search of UFOware when the underlying material is stored on a local hard-drive.
(I've previously posted about the software used to generate these results, i.e. the free version of PDF X-Change Editor for Windows, which allows search results to be saved in various formats and to be reloaded at a later date rather than having to redo a search. Since a search of my main UFO collection now takes about 24 hours, even using a very faster 1TB SSD drive, this ability to reload searches is useful).
Hi Isaac,
ReplyDeleteI think this post eminnently underlines why a database would be much more rewarding for you that the current offline system you currently have.
* Every time you search, you need to save the results off, otherwise you incurr the penalty of the search taking the same amount of time
* Every search you save needs to be in a format such that you can quickly understand what that search is for and then retrieve it and load it in
* Aquire another document to your collection and you really need to run all the searches again to have an upto date set of results for your offline collection
When these points are coupled with the fact that you then need to provide context for the search results for them to be meaningful I can see that over time conducting these searches can appear less rewarding and perhaps more onerous.
Regards,
Will