Gardner Beacon, Issues

TL;DR -- Before we publish GB XIV, 1 and 2, we take a look at the fourteen years of Gardner Beacon issues. Some of the PDF files have been republished with links. That effort will continue until they are all updated. 

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Yes, we are in our fourteenth year with our first issue being in May of 2011. One thing to notice is that the blog has "Gazette" in the name. We were leaning toward that but changed to "Beacon" for several reasons, one of these does point back to Winthrop's sermon in which he used the "City on the hill" phrase. 

We have an Index from the beginning. For every issue (using GB I, 1), we had the blog post (above link) and a PDF (with a link to a print version) at our Heritage site. For the first four issues, we had a Sources file which gave some sense of the provenance of the material. Two years ago, we started to redo the PDF to include links to the material being discussed.   

At the same time, we created a mobile-friendly version of the issue using WordPress which was an improvement on the HTML/CSS experiment that we did earlier. This happened when Google announced that they would not link in their search results to sites that were noncompliant. This was the 2015 timeframe. 

Since then, we went with a more adaptable method using HTML/CSS/Javascript as we see with the portal (TGSoc.org) which was quite interesting in terms of doing custom sites. The trend has started toward the look-alike type that has become so prevalent. There is a lot to discuss about using these, but let's put that off, for a while. As the topic will be important in the near future as the world shakes out the influence of technological changes that came about with no seeming forethought. 

Now, before going on to  GB XIV, 1, this table shows the list of issues where we are tracking the conversion of the issue to the PDF with links. The exercise allows us to review the past fourteen years in terms of content through time. 

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Curation will be more important in the future than it ever was. The following effort allows us to go to all of the issues and link to material that can be considered source. 

         Track updates to GB issues, Published  

• 2011 Vol. I No. 1; Vol. I, No. 2; Vol. I, No. 3; Vol. I, No. 4; Vol. I, No. 5
• 2012 Vol. II, No. 1; Vol. II, No. 2; Vol. II, No. 3; Vol. II, No. 4; Vol. II, No. 5; Vol. II, No. 6
• 2013 Vol. III, No. 1; Vol. III, No. 2; Vol. III, No. 3; Vol. III, No. 4
• 2014 Vol. IV, No. 1; Vol. IV, No. 2; Vol. IV, No. 3; Vol. IV, No. 4
  
• 2015 Vol. V, No. 1; Vol. V, No. 2
  
• 2016 Vol. VI, No. 1; Vol. VI, No. 2
  
• 2017 Vol. VII, No. 1; Vol. VII, No. 2
  
• 2018 Vol. VIII, No. 1; Vol. VIII, No. 2
• 2019 Vol. IX, No. 1; Vol. IX, No. 2; Vol. IX, No. 3 
• 2020 Vol. X, No. 1; Vol. X, No. 2 
• 2021 Vol. XI, No. 1; Vol. XI, No. 2
• 2022 Vol. XII, No. 1; Vol. XII, No. 2; Vol. XII, No. 3
  
• 2023 Vol. XIII, No. 1; Vol. XIII, No. 2;
  

Since 2022, we have published with WordPress

Vol. XII, No. 1; Vol. XII, No. 2; Vol. XII, No. 3
Vol. XIII. No. 1; Vol. XIII, No. 2; 

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After we complete this exercise, we will go back and determine where we need to publish a correct due to the change in status of the information. That is, what impact does finding the records of births of the children in Sherborne, Dorset, UK have on the issues? We expect that we'll include a link to an error-correcting blog post that will be availabe with lists of contents and indeces. 

Remarks: Modified: 07/13/2024

07/13/2024 -- One issue relates to starting the new blog in WP. In the focus on content, a couple of configuration steps were not completed. One of these dealt with comments. That was no problem for two years. GenAI's general emergence in 2024, as 2023 was a period of getting familiar with the phenomenon, allowed easier programming, such as hacking out comments. The comments accumulated by the 1000s, slowly down response. That stream has stopped; all existing comments were deleted. Hence, response is now as expected. Comments can be sent to: jmswtlk@tgsoc. org.