GCD Announcement (fwd)

[Fredrik Ekman]

Greetings!

As I have previously mentioned in posts to this list, I am a member of 
the Grand Comics Database (see below for details). The personnel 
coordinator of GCD, Tim Stroup, has recently requested the following 
message about the GCD FTP and WWW site to be forwarded to all relevant 
mailing lists and news groups. As it happens, disney-comics is 
particularly relevant, since one of the sample indexes happens to be 
Uncensored Mouse (indexed by yours truly). Please consider taking the 
time to check this out! In spite of a few "rough edges" in the database 
format (most of which will no doubt me smoothed out in time) it is really 
a grand scheme.

For the record: I have had plans to convert our own database to the GCD 
format, but currently find myself out of time. If anyone else has the 
knowledge and time to do such a thing, I am sure that the GCD 
management would be overjoyed.

  /F

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Grand Comics Database Demo FTP and Web site

The Grand Comics Database's (GCD) attempt to index every comic book ever
published is rolling right along.   Since we started just over a year ago, 
more than 40 international members have indexed over 21,000 comic books ranging
from Action Comics#1 to Zot#33.  Information about the creators of books for
over 50 publishers and almost 1800 different titles has been collected
electronically for eventual use in a searchable database.  We are well on our
way towards actually accomplishing our goal since we estimated, when we began,
that there were over 100,000 individual issues to be indexed.  Of course, that
does not include the 5,000 or so comic books that came out last year.  We have
even just initiated a sub group which will focus exclusively on Golden Age
comics and their inherent problems of indexing.  If you would like to become
involved, let me know.

Now we need your help.  We would like input on our format, type of data we are
collecting, and any over all comments on the project.  The project is still
young enough that we can make some changes in it.  So we would like to tap into
all the expertise on the Net and get your input.

We now have set up a public ftp site that contains our charter, a description
of the GCD project, a description of the GCD format, a list of comic books that
have been indexed, and a few sample files for your inspection.  The files at
this site are in the GCD format, so you can download them into your favorite
database program and work with the data.  They are all in text files so you can
download/view them even without a database program.

We also have a Web site set up which allows you to view the data.  The Web site
also contains our charter, format, completed books list, and background files. 
The format on the Web site is not the GCD format, but makes it much easier to
read via the Web.

The addresses are as follows:

FTP -  ftp://ftp.hiof.no/pub/Comics/Database.public
Web -   http://www.hiof.no/~jonal/gcd/
     or    http://www.digimark.net/wraith/GCD/ (American mirror)

One more very important thing, if you would like to help us out by indexing
some comic books, we would love to have you.  Though we have come a long way in
a year, we still have a long way to go and we could sure use your help.

Please feel free to post this to any other comic book related lists that you
would like to post it to.

Please look over what we have done and send any criticisms, comments, and or
questions to:

Tim Stroup
GCD Personnel Coordinator
stroup at lmsc.lockheed.com