Opinion about new GLO Reference Manual
 

Ok fellas i just wanted to see what you all thought about a new reference manual similar to a Bairds Manual.

There is starting to be some new discussion about this seeing as the last edition is from 1991.
**Discussion is under Greek Life and 'The Chronological Evolvement of Sororities'

Apparently NICs official position is that they arent really interested in a new edition due to low sales of the last edition. So someone mentioned maybe having the NPC purchase the rights and maybe get them to redo it.

I think its a great idea, but i also think we should step it up to the technology and times. I think maybe a whole new format and possibly title would be best.

In a nut shell I think it should be an electronic database that is extremely detailed (obviously without including ritualistic and other closed material), easily searchable and sortable.

For example if you wanted to search the founding of some obscure local, you could type in the name and then sort by school until you found the one you were looking for. The really great thing is massive amounts of information can be stored electronically, so you could have very comprehensive and accurate recording of what happened.

Just think about how much information could be stored as text via a 'now' single standard blu-ray disc, that is approx 25 GIGABYTES of memory, and if thats not enough it could easily be 'boxed-set' upto even 100 GBs.

It would seem relatively inexpensive, and instead of wasting money on printing a new editon and continually updating and printing newer ones, you could intially use the money to help fund the massive amount of research and transcribing and sorting all of the data. Also think how easy it would be to update, worst case scenario you either buy an expansion disk, set to the old format, or update altogether, either way it would be simple and cheap.

Anyway thats whats bouncing around my brain at 1 in the freaking morning.

Any opinions, ideas, possible database programs to use, etc etc.

In ZAX

The reason the last edition did not sell, was it was a peice of crap for such an outstanding book as it used to be!:rolleyes:

Evidently the NIC has its own agenda and it seems some were not happy with the way they were trying to run it as 3 large Fraternities pulled out.

Maybe your idea would work and would be cheaper by going to disc. But it still would need a writer to keep up with all of the changes going on with the Latino, Asian, and Multi GLOs.

Trey,

How important is it to you that the information is available on a disk?

I am familiar with a few subscription based databases in which the individual or company pays an annual or monthly fee for access via the web.

Also, if it's web-based, the research can be ongoing and 100 percent up to date as its accessed.

Obviously, I'd like to help where I can.

Please excuse me for crashing, but has anyone ever thought of publishing a Bairds-like manual in volumes? It could easily be divided by:


-Overview, with the colleges/chapters in it
-NIC/former NIC
-NPC
-Divine 9
-Honoraries
-Others
-Index

Sell them for $15-$20 each, and most people would buy at least two of them.

Trey, how you move forward is your choice, but this is what I might do if I were you:

1) Set up a Foundation and call it something that makes it clear exactly what it does, something like "The Foundation for the Study and Preservation of Fraternal and Sororal Life." (Just an example.) Make sure this foundation gets 501c3 status -- this is important because you are going to want to solicit donations for the seed money for the project.

2) Recruit a good 8-12 board members comprising members of a wide variety of GLOs. Higher ranking members would provide more legitimacy for fundraising efforts.

3) Recruit a separate advisory board composed of various GLO scholars and possibly non-GLO members who have experience writing encyclopedias. They may or may not be the actual writers, but should be able to help guide the project academically and help recruit ground-level researchers and writers.

4) Recruit your volunteers/writers.


Basically, you want to have a sound structure for the financial/administrative aspects of the project as well as the research aspects of the project. There is more that can be said legally speaking, but no reason for extra words at this point. :)

How am i moving forward, well lets just say this was an idea and for now, thats all it is. I was just brainstorming and enough has come up here lately to warrant rebuilding or rethinking a manual such as this.

As for a disk, i could care less other then the fact that it is something that is tabgible and belongs to you.

It could even be set up similar to a more expansive forum, i.e GC, but instead of clicking and discussing things, you could click on say Delta Zeta and it is a complete reference guide for that sorority.

I just think there is enough technology and people willing to work on this where something could actually come out of it.

I also believe the days of Bairds Manuals are now dead.

What about a greekwiki? It would focus on just fraternities, sororities, honor societies, etc. and can be updated online as new information becomes available. Information can be linked much as it is on wikipedia, and people could make donations to maintain it.

http://greekopedia.com

Same principle, a GCer has worked on it (very nice guy).

I guess personally I'd like to see something with more quality control than a wiki-type thing.

That too is what passed thru mymind was a Greek Wikipedia, but with Wikis, you get too much unmonitored material, and with GLOs someone is always bashing someone else org. so i think something that was produced by an actual commitee would probably workout best