What is this and where can i find it? Did i miss something?
" the database in the MEPS Research Explorer does have all the publications the Watch Tower Society had ever published in digital form."
Entire WT Library From Beginning
by admirmitch 23 Replies latest watchtower bible
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average joe
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Satanus
Barb anderson has the most that i've seen. In it's early history, russel sometimes had ties w other adventists, even advertising some of their books. Barb has those, as well.
S
Ps, did you know that the first pres wasn't russell? It was a guy called conely.
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Quendi
bookmarked
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Scott77
marked
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average joe
uh i dont get it whys everyone marking? lol sorry what did i miss? what is meps and how do we access barbs collection ?? :)
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Anony Mous
The MEPS Research Explorer format is the format the WTBTS uses on the WTLIB CD's. It's a text-only database, compressed and when someone analyzed, actually bought from another company related to Palm (as in Palm Pilot e-reader software) back in the day - the WTLIB used to be compatible with that Palm Pilot software.
Either way, you could probably extract all the data from the WTLIB CD and extract all the data from the old books and put them together in your own database format. The problem is anything after 1930's is probably copyright protected (thanks Disney) and thus not allowed to be republished.
Everything else is on archive.org and a bunch of torrent sites. I have everything on my computer as well (~5GB), most forms, publications, a lot of BOE letters. It's not all that much if converted to text but it would be a lot of work and not a lot of benefit as they disregard the old and secret stuff anyway.
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labmik
On this Watchtower Collection. The US Book Archives has some early WT volumes and the photodrama in PDF form for free download - but not complete runs of publications. I was one of Australia's top WT collectors during the 1980s and had almost everything ever printed when I was in Melbourne ( Australia )as a Witness. In reality I had many by 70% original in at least 1 or more editions and another 20% in Xerox form and the rest was missing entirely. I knew of alot of items but could not find acaopy to even Xereox let alon have an original. Yet my own private watchtower collection rivelled Bethel's in Sydney.
The items you will find hard to get are things like Morton Edgars Pyramid books and early publications of C.T.Russell's which were printed by isolated witnesses some were women who printed only a few copies; plus in J.F. Rutherford's day - example - "Seola" later known as "Angels & Women" (1924 ) plus a host of breakaway (Evil Slave Class) material from the days of E.C.Hennings group from 1909 and the Berean break away in 1919 and also the rare items from WW2 such as End of Nazism" ( printed for Germany ) and "Freedom or Romanism" ( only printed in Australa and not any where else in the world ).
During the 1980s we had a collectors manual of JW Literature which was printed by Duane Magnani ( from Witness Incorported ) and it was not complete even them. Items were rated out of 1-10 for rarity - 10 being the most rare. Many Watchtower books fell into the 8-10 range.
Another trap you need to know is the eeditions many many cangeds were in the editions single word changes which alterd the context. so just because you have a set of the seven "Studies in the Scriptures" does not mean you have the true information at hand as these books alone went through numeroua text alterations to suit doctrainal changes at the time. Volume 7 the finished mystery had numerous editions and some had missing pages ripped out during the banning of the book. These are worth a lot of money to collectors even as incomplete books. Even the good old small dark blue blue "Truth" Book published in 1968 had another edition printed after 1975 which had all the references to 1975 removed. You would not know unless you had the 2 editions side by side. Year books were printed in various colurs in different countires as were the bibles. Ever seen a Yellow NWT Bible - I have.
I had at one time well over 100 volumes of the "Studies in the Scriptures" and the "Millenial Dawn" series in my private collection, which is why I am mentioning this to you all as thes had numerous text changes. I have noted the same changes in some reprints of the Watchtower Magazine.
Kingdom Ministries are another drama, as they differ from country to county. For example - nothing was directly implied about 1975 in the Australian K.M Version, but it definitely was in the USA Version.
The Australian "Informant" was also diferent to the USA version, as was Consolation ( small booklet size in Australia and large size in the USA ).
Golden Ages as far as I know are very hard to find in any condition, let alone in complete runs. Items like Assembly Reports, Kingdom News Tracts and Songbooks, plus Internal Bethel items Elders Letters, Publiuc Talk scripts, Drama Scripts, etc, are very, very rare and many mention things not covered in the mainstream Watchtower publications. Much of that internal stuff is destroyed or returnd to Bethel when finished with so it can be redistributed. I've seen and owned items many witnesses refuse to believe existed - as I had original copies in my own collection.
At the end of the day - you have to ask yourself - What do you want it all for ? - to prove the JWs don't have the truth !
You can do that just with a Bible and no publications.
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Satanus
Most of it is in digital form, pdf, mostly. A person could prolly copy it all onto a blue ray or maybe even a dvd w an index for individual publications, at the least. That would get it all into one place and be fairly accessible. Easy to put into the torrent tubes, too.
S
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LoisLane looking for Superman
>>>>>>>>>Labmic,
Welcome! Make yourself at home.
This is your 4th post. Is it possible for us to hear more from you?
Do you get a chance to read Blondie's & Laoleia's post's? They are highly researched.
A yellow NWT Bible, lol. Do you think someone ran off a few for fun?
What is your back ground besides collecting? Were you a MS, Elder, Bethelite?
If you have time, please share more of your stories. What you posted in the above. Fascinatng.
1975 not a big deal Down Under? Umm.
I didn't know the "Truth" book had "new light" printed post 1975. Makes sense. (I guess I slept thru that change).lol
The early women writers. Wow. When you collect, you collect!
Have you noticed, is it in the new 2013 Yr Bk, at the end, they have a b&w photo of Russellites, with the year 1913? I thought the Society was trying hard to forget anything to tie modern day JW's into Russell. (Shaking head in wonder).
LLL4S
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bohm
My 90 year old granddad scraped all the content of awake and the WT from the WTCD a while back and put it in a sql database, that bit is not hard, but illegal so it would be against the posting guidelines to discuss it to much here.
It would be more difficult to get the content from the PDF files. As i recall some of them are not in very good quality and i dont really know the status of image-to-text conversion software. Someone with such a program installed could try to run a few old PDFs through it and see what happends.
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