Baker Perkins Historical Society - Virtual Books

Introduction - What is a “Virtual Book”?

The concept of a “Virtual Book” came about as a result of a number of different perceived problems:

After 7 years’ work, the Society’s two websites have grown to a point where even the compiler has difficulty remembering what had been covered and where any “fact” might be found.
Information is wasted if it is not easily accessible and conventional Indexes can be cumbersome and incomplete.
Although both websites have a “Search” facility installed, any attempt to develop, and more importantly keep up to date, more than a rudimentary index was abandoned some time ago.
The market for industrial histories is small and printing costs – for books of a reasonable quality – are high.
Although BPHS has published a number of books, there remains the feeling that – as and when more information comes to light – re-printing or producing an Addendum – is not an option.
There are at least two potential markets for BPHS publications – those ex-employees who are computer literate and those who are not. With regard to solving some of the above problems, time itself reduces the latter category.

So, the solution might be to harness the inbuilt power of the website and:

Draft an outline book with sections, chapters and an Index and install it on the website rather than print it. This would contain the minimum of text, concentrating on delivering a clear and concise explanation of what the new publication is intended to cover.
Use the electronic “links” facility built into the computer operating system to connect the reader to all(?) the relevant items which exist anywhere on the websites. – in other words create a much more powerful index which can be up-dated at the stroke of a computer key.

The reader would click on the relevant icon for the particular book and scroll down through the Cover and Introductory pages to the Index. Clicking on the desired subject and its highlighted ’links’ within the Index would take the reader to one or more existing references to that subject throughout the websites. This would allow the reader to access not only relevant information but also to begin to put the subject into its specific historical and business development context. It should also propel the reader down a lot of ‘new’ paths and expose him/her to facts about the Baker Perkins Group which he/she might not have encountered before. It is argued that this development not only allows constant up-dating but is also a powerful way of bringing together much of the relevant information, currently spread across hundreds of computer pages, in an easily accessible manner.

This concept could be used to produce any number of “Virtual Books” based on any aspect of Baker Perkins’ history already mentioned on the websites but it is arguably most useful when addressing a subject that encompasses a range of similar activities that occurred across the Group.

Dick Preston, March 2011