"Mennonites of the Ohio and Eastern Conference" Web Version

The web publication of "Mennonites of the Ohio and Eastern Conference" was commissioned by the Ohio Mennonite Conference. Special thanks go to Lyle Miller and his Canon ImageRunner and Jan Skranka, whose long hours with Omipage Pro yielded a web version that actually corrects several typos in the original manuscript while retaining a high degree of fidelity to the original text and layout, to Goshen College and the Archives of the Mennonite Church for hosting the project, and to the good folks at Google, whose indexing bots will soon deliver a full-text index of this work to researchers and history buffs around the globe.

The final form of the project includes 1) a page-by-page HTML version which can be accessed with reasonable speed over a modem connection, 2) a chapter-by-chapter searchable version delivered as a series of PDF files, and 3) the original scanned version of the book in a single PDF file.

Goals of the Project:

1) To get this significant work onto the web in a form that could be indexed by major search engines

2) To retain as much of the formatting and layout of the original book while adhering to established web standards

3) Make the book accessible even to users with slow web connections

Caveats:

1) HTML renders differently on different browsers and different operating systems. Results may vary from system to system.
2) Limitations in OCR technology and HTML made it impractical to retain all footnote superscripts in the HTML copy. This limitation is somewhat offset by full-text indexing, which makes the footnote texts readily available to researchers.
3) Limitations in OCR technology and HTML made it impossible to produce a web-accessible, indexable version that retains 100% fidelity to the original manuscript.

One of the seminal tasks of scholarship in our day is determining what works will cross over from the analog to the digital world. This decision will ultimately determine which works are easily accessible and which moulder in obscurity on a library shelf. I am grateful to have played a role in making this important work available to a global audience.

Michael R. Sherer
Project Leader
Executive Director, Mennonite.net
January 24, 2003