Such was the warning that my parents vouchsafed me as I gave myself over to reading with an unnerving and indefatigable industry even as a child. As the vicissitudes of time ran their course, more and more books found themselves into my private quarters, so that acquaintances would comment that my room was Noe’s Ark for bibliomaniacs.
The curious analogy brought up an interesting question. The Lord God blessed the inhabitants of the Ark, saying, “Ingredimini super terram: crescite et multiplicamini super eam” (Gen. cap. viii., 17; cf. supr. cap. i., 22, 28; cf. infr. cap. ix., 1, 7): how am I to do such a thing with my books?
Yet the Lord God rescued me from the plight of bookish sterility in the elegant and clement designs of His adorable Providence. A friend of mine offered to reprint some of the rarer tomes I possessed, so that now some of the tomes have somehow gone forth upon the earth and increased and multiplied thereupon.
Then CathInfo came into the picture. As I participated on this forum more and more, one of the things I readily perceived was the great need amongst traditional Catholics for books wherewith to answer their questions and address their doubts. Some of these tomes are difficult to acquire and rather expensive to purchase.
Once again, the elegance and beauty of the dispositions of Divine Providence became manifest when I realized that present day technology would enable me to have my tomes go forth unto the world and to increase and multiply therein. By scanning leaves from select tomes, and editing and uploading them unto the internet, information that would have otherwise been inaccessible and unknown to others is now within the grasp of those who would wish to avail themselves of the same.
This especially true for the woodcuts and other illustrations that have been neglected by Catholic publishers for many decades now and wherewith I am wont to embellish the more important threads and posts I publish here.
The matter of choosing the tome can be decided by a question posited by another forum member, or the occasion of a major Feastival of the ecclesiastical calendar, or something whereupon I may have stumbled in my studies and though it interesting enough to share with others, &c. When the tome has been chosen, I have to manually scan the pages directly unto a flashdrive. When all the pages have been scanned, I have to edit them so that they may be readable. This involves cropping, resizing, changing the brightness and contrast, &c.
The following are the notes for the “Sunday Packet,” as an example of the process:
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Friday evening at the latest—
The Sacramentary: crop to >>> 1230 X 2130 >>> reduce by 61% >>> 750 X 1299
Epistle Commentaries: crop to >>> 1243 X 2100 >>> reduce by 60% >>> 746 X 1260
Gospel Commentaries: crop to >>> 1278 X 2152 >>> reduce by 60% >>> 767 X 1291
St. Andrew Missal: crop to >>> 1040 X 1740 >>> reduce by 70% >>> 728 X 1218
Dominican Missal: crop to >>> 950 X 1640 >>> reduce by 75% >>> 713 X 1230
Carmelite Missal: crop to >>> 930 X 1630 >>> reduce by 80% >>> 744 X 1304
Spanish Roman Missal: crop to >>> 990 X 1730 >>> reduce by 75 % >>>743 X 1298
Spanish Dominican Missal: crop to >>> 1040 X 1650 >>> reduce by 70% >>> 728 X 1155
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More is to come in the future. Hopefully the exigencies of present circuмstance will continue to allow me to scan, edit and upload more from my library.
Note: The scans are exclusive to CathInfo. If others wish to host them on other forums or blogs or otherwise make them available publicly, they must have written permission from the moderators of CathInfo and have as an advisory notice “Courtesy of CathInfo.com” — this matter I leave to the discretion of the moderators.
So there it is: the “why” and “how” I get the scans uploaded to CathInfo, for those who asked, and the explanation of why I have had to break some of the books apart.
Ultimately, I am a pretty bad librarian when I have rare and expensive books with their covers torn off and their spines broken: but it is all for a good cause.
It is as the Greek myth of the newborn Hermes, who made the first lyre from the tortoise he found on Mount Cyllene, having “cut off its limbs and scooped out the marrow of the mountain-tortoise with a scoop of grey iron” (
Homeric Hymn IV,
To Hermes): only in being gruesomely destroyed could the tortoise become the “comrade of the feast, lovely in shape, sounding at the dance,” according to what Hermes said to the poor tortoise: “if you die, then you shall make sweetest song” (ibid.).
Anyways, the things of this world are fleeting, and in eternity no books will be necessary.[/color][/b][/font][/size]
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Topic: A Process of Sharing (Read 3721 times)