The quality of the journals available on this site is related to the nature of the original productions. Some of the earliest newsletters were handwritten and so are represented essentially as photographs of the pages. Those that are typewritten can be processed to translate the text into electronic characters that can be searched with a text search facility, however, the quality of the search will depend on the quality of the original text: some is well-formed and will be read moderately accurately while others may not be accurate at all. Even if the page looks accurate, the optical character reader may be inaccurate.
  Journal 119 and later were prepared electronically for printing and the files transferred to this site are fully searchable and visually accurate. They are marked thus †.
  The early newsletters and the journals upt to number 118 are scanned from an original paper copy to give a reasonably accurate visual picture of the page. Sometimes the text has been edited by replacing a character that is faint or ill-formed by a properly formed version copied from another part of the page. The visual pictures of printed text on the pages is then processed by a optical character reading software that places a transparent version of the electronic text over the scanned version of each individual word. Although you cannot see this text, you can use the search facility in your web-browser or Adobe Acrobat reader to find the text and highlight it on the page.
  Be warned that this is dependent on the accuracy of the character reader, which works well for modern text but is likely to be inaccurate for old typed materials produced on stencils. You can actually see the hidden text by selecting the words on the page and pasting the selection into a word processor. This will show you the electronic text and give you an idea of its accuracy. For instance, the following text is on page 2 of the Newsletter July 1962 circulated by the secretary Betty Ruffle:

This is interpreted thus:

1962 Promenade Season
Another suggestion for written action. In this Centenary Year, as members
will have notioed, there is only one Deliu8 work projeoted for performance at
the Proms.. Sea Drift. The Hon. Seoretary has alrea~ written on behalf of
the Sooiety to William G10ok, Controller of Musio, but so far he has not deemed
to reply;' . It is suggested that members send a gentle notel to Mr. Glook outlining
their feelings on the programmes this year, and ~ interesting replies
may be sent to the Hon. Seoretary for inolusion in a future newsletter.
'tWi1liam G10ok", Controller of Music, .
Ya.ldj,ng House, Grent" Portland Street, London, W.l..

Although 'Glock' is clearly typed on the original, the optical character reader gives ‘Glook’ or ‘G10ck’ and so an electronic search for ‘Glock’ will give no result.
The later newsletters are often better, however, be wary that some text will be misinterpreted. On the left, below, is part of a reproduction of a newpaper review in Journal 93 and on the right is the OCR translation performed by Acrobat Professional 8. Some words (here coloured red) were not read at all, others were misread. For instance, the second paragraph of the original review reads ‘This was to have been sung in the original German’ but it it is translated into ‘This was to have been BUNg in the origmal German’. An electronic search for Beecham will find the word in the title, but not in the first line of the review itself.

Original Text

Electronic translation

Some journals have have been processed to replace the original text with the electronic text. The electronic search will now find the text precisely on the page. However, there may be errors in proof-reading during the translation. This is therefore done sparingly, particularly on individual pages with high quality pictures and not much text. The difference between the two methods is minimal, but may be vital for particular details. For comparison, the same journal is here presented in the two different formats: original image of the page, electronic translation.
  When all the journals are on the site in one form or another, consideration will be given to improving the quality of the electronic translation of the text. This will depend on the perceived need for the use of electronic search facilities.

David Tall
on behalf of
The Delius Society