by coffee_black 15 Replies latest watchtower bible
Some here have original copies going back to Russell's time. Would it make sense to have a resource library available where we pool what we have? I have quiet a lot...it's sitting in boxes in my daughter's garage in Florida at the moment, but I can get it at some point. We could compile a list of what we have so that anyone looking for specific articles would have a contact. I think we have access to more than we realize.
Coffee
an excellent idea, it would mean research for ALL would be a lot easier. Clearly coffee black, the black coffee is working! :)
I wanted to find and never found some such library with scanned originals! It would be very nice!
A few people have been working on it
Hi Lady Lee,
That's great! When I get my boxes...should I send you a list of what I've got?
Coffee
I don't want to burst anybodys bubble but you CAN get all of the Watchtowers EVER on CD-ROM. Copy and paste this link
http://www.researchapplications.org/
They have got it all. They are wonderful. I think freeminds.org is selling them on sale. Hope that helps you guys out.
Drew
Do you know if what is on the CDs are the originals or the edited versions or hopefully both? And yes I saw them on sale at Freeminds.
Coffee
A list would be great
What I have in mind is a comprehensive "Apostate Library CDROM" which contains not only the latest WT Library, but all the old stuffed scanned in as pdf's. Wouldn't that be cool?
You mean like this?
Best of all, it's FREE from your friendly neighborhood apostate! YES, FREE - from a worldwide community of volunteers - no charge for materials or postage! There is probably a volunteer near you.
Watchtower Book Shelf CD-ROMFully searchable PDF archive
The Watchtower Bookshelf CD contains over 6,000 pages from books the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society — every book from 1942 to 1959. These works are not on the Watchtower Society’s official "Watchtower Library" CD.
No more will you have to search for hard-to-find titles and pay a small fortune for them, only to find that some 4 year old colored the pages with his crayons!
Fully searchable with pictures
First, we carefully scanned each of these books. We then used state-of-the-art Optical Character Recognition so that the text could be extracted. Finally, we combined the high-quality scan and the OCR together into Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). The result: the most accurate electronic reproduction, with all of the color of the original books complete with pictures, and with a fully searchable text.
This is better than the official Watchtower Library. How? Firstly, the Watchtower Library CD-ROM does not contain any of these books from the 1940s and 1950s. Secondly, the Watchtower Library is text-only (i.e. no pictures). Thirdly, the search engine on the Watchtower Library is somewhat crippled, and seems to not find many interesting things. But the search abilities on our Watchtower Book Shelf CD-ROM is practically unstoppable: just open the book with Adobe Acrobat and enter your keyword into the search engine. If that word exists anywhere it will be found. At last, decent keyword searching for Watchtower literature!
Why start with 1942?
"Why not begin with the releases of 1940, and include the entire decade?" The reason that the decision was made to start with 1942 was primarily that 1942 was the beginning of the "Knorr/Franz" era of Watchtower leadership.
A secondary reason was to avoid duplication of effort: earlier Watchtower publications are available on the "Rutherford's Rainbow" CD and other CDs published commercially by Research Applications International, P.O. Box 710022, San Diego, CA 92171. Most of Charles Taze Russell's works are also available from the Bible Students.
This CD is in no way related to either Research Applications International or the Bible Students.
The purpose of the Book Shelf CD-ROM
This distribution is being made for purposes of research, scholarship, teaching, news reporting, commentary or criticism.*NOT* the Watchtower Library CD-ROM
Please note that this is not the official Watchtower Library CD-ROM which is covered by copyright and available only directly from the Watchtower Society.Volume One: Books of the 1940's
THE NEW WORLD, 1942
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE, 1943
THE KINGDOM IS AT HAND, 1944
THEOCRATIC AID TO KINGDOM PUBLISHERS, 1945
EQUIPPED FOR EVERY GOOD WORK, 1946
LET GOD BE TRUE, 1946Volume Two: Books of the 1950's
THIS MEANS EVERLASTING LIFE, 1950
WHAT HAS RELIGION DONE FOR MANKIND?, 1951
LET GOD BE TRUE, 1952
MAKE SURE OF ALL THINGS, 1953
NEW HEAVENS AND A NEW EARTH, 1953
YOU MAY SURVIVE ARMAGEDDON INTO GOD'S NEW WORLD, 1955
QUALIFIED TO BE MINISTERS, 1955
MAKE SURE OF ALL THINGS, REVISED, 1957
YOUR WILL BE DONE ON EARTH, 1958
FROM PARADISE LOST TO PARADISE REGAINED, 1958
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES & THE DIVINE PURPOSE, 1959
On the CD's I have there is a PDF file for each year, kind of like a bound volume. The pages are scanned, but are also fully searchable. I thought about building a big collection, then doing the scanning and all that stuff, but I saw that it was allready done and that was good enough from me.
