Sunday, March 13, 2011

Potter Profiles in the beginning......................

This was the very first issue of Potter Profiles way back in 1986. In those days, I used first a typewriter, then a Kaypro 10 and and SkyIndex and finally in the early 90s I "graduated" to a desktop Gateway. Each issue/volume/booklet was about 30-50 pages with an every-name index in the back. I posted the information exactly as folks sent their data to me (except for re-typing) and did not do any research as to what was correct and what was not; I figured that was for my readers to figure out as I was presenting many different Potter lines other than my own.  I did try to "plug in" the lineages that folks shared with me into numbered Potter lines. I began with Branch 1 as my branch and just numbered up from there. I think Branch 3 had more submissions that any other but the numbers went up nearly to 100. If I could not figure out what branch a submission was, then I just gave it a new number. With the advent of computer databases, I could hear the death knell for a paper-form surname publication. With issue 50 in 1996, I wrapped up the project. I did pay a private party in the late 90s to digitize all 3000 pages and (bless him!) Ilya D'Addezio posted the entire database (in its "dinosaur" form) on his LiveRoots website.  So now you know "the rest of the story," and we're ready to move forward, right???

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