Hi @Josephine,
No the digitised transactions were not perk. They were given to me to assess, as to how they could be best used on the website.
I made a number of suggestions as to what could be done.
These records were essentially OCR scans, and each batch of text has a reference number that also corresponds to the image that the texts were scanned from.
Douglas Scott sources his information from many books and records (including the Transactions).
His Father R.E Scott or Dick Scott, probably knew more about the history of Hawick than anyone else, and he was a prolific collector of books and information on everything to do with the Scottish Borders, but with a focus on Hawick. He was also the Curator of the Wilton Lodge (Hawick Museum)
http://www.hawickonline.com/wilton-lodge-park So his passion has apparently flowed down to the next generation of his family.
You can read all about R.E Scott in the Hawick Word Book.
The is a great book by R.E Scott called "Companion to Hawick". See attached. Douglas gave me a copy of it in 2014. You can buy one online if you search for it.
I know that there was some work being done for the Society to make HAS records available online, but I have not really had an update on this matter for a couple of years now.
Brett
@Josephine I received the HAS records on a hard drive in 2014 whilst in Hawick, from the then President of the Hawick Archaeological Society.
The files amount to 130 Gigabytes in total size, so they are not easily shared. The intention is that they will someday be available for members in a searchable format, via the Society's website and available to folk around the globe to access. http://hawickhistory.scot
"A Hawick Word Book" by Professor Douglas Scott is available and downloadable online and that is your best bet for detailed information at this point @Josephine.
Brett
Thanks, Brett.
Are the digitized Transactions a perk of lifetime membership in the Hawick Archaeological Society? If so, where do I sign up?
I contacted the Society several years ago (prior to 2014) and was told about their intentions, but it still hasn't happened and I'm starting to doubt it'll happen in my lifetime. Have they even got a timeline for the launch? I'm shocked to learn that all of the Transactions were already digitized 7 years ago and nothing's been done with them: what a waste of potential income for the Society! At this point, it would probably make more sense financially to make them available for sale on CDs. If and when an index ever gets done and put up on their website, people could use both, or they could purchase the indexes on supplemental CDs.
I am familiar with Douglas Scott's impressive Hawick Word Book and consider it to be a helpful pointer but he doesn't list his sources, so when he writes something like, "A story is told that..." or "He is said to have...," I don't know where he got this information.
Unless Douglas Scott also has copies of all of the digitized Transactions?
The photos are very nice!
Regards,
Josephine
