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Recent donations 2007 -
thanks for your very kind support!
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From Bill Jones, Columbus,
Ohio, December 2007. |
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The happy man on the left is
our donor and and exchange partner William 'Bill' E.
Jones, from Ohio. Bill tries to acquire as much
international material as possible for the special UFO
collection at the
Ohio State University (OSU) and we are
augmenting a heap of materials for him at the archives
and expect to get a big parcel on the way early in 2008.
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Bill's most recent
parcel to us included seven plastic toy
models of UFO spacecraft of different
shapes, the newly published (by
MUFON of Ohio) Report on unidentified
flying objects observed February 24, 1959 by
American-United Airline pilots, and also a
number of new items for our Kenny Young
clipping collection, previously donated by
Jones. |
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From CISU, Torino, Italy,
November 2007 |
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The Italian Center for
UFO Studies (CISU
- Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici) is one of the
most active and experienced European groups in UFO
studies. The Italians have published a large number of
regional and report-type studies and seem to have a
digital database on almost every aspect of the wide
spectrum of UFO reports. |
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AFU just
received two heavy parcels crammed with Italian
magazines not previously in our collection, including
(on the left), the previously missing latest ten issues
of their prime, glossy magazine
UFO -
Rivista di Informazione Ufologica,
published 2 times annually. |
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From Wyatt Cox, Anderson,
South Carolina, October 2007. |
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Letter and
book received from Wyatt Cox, dated October 10,
2007:
"I was looking at your
website and was impressed with your work. I am the
author of Spooklights: the amazing Cloverdale,
Alabama spooklight mystery. This book summarizes my
research and documents this amazing and very active
spooklight area. Please accept a copy of my book for
your archives."
Anyone interested in more
details could look up
Wyatt
Cox' own website where you find a contact address
for emails. AFU is also proud owners of Wyatt's previous
book on UFOs and Bigfoot sightings in Alabama.
Wyatt's initiative provides an example for every author
in the UFO-fortean arena.
As for the books'
contents one cannot help but wonder if some of these 'spooklights'
might not be contrails from high-flying aircraft? The
repeated references to 'eight feet light balls' are a
little strange when you see all the photos of
free-flying objects obviously high up in the sky with no
background reference? |
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From Bill Jones, August 2007. |
| Two books
on experimental aircraft (X-planes and prototypes
by Jim Winchester, and Blue fires - the lost
secrets of Nazi technology by Gary Hyland)
donated to the AFU library, and included in the most
recent parcel from Bill Jones in Ohio to Clas
Svahn in Stockholm.
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From Mikhail Gershtein, St.
Petersburg, Russia, spring and summer of 2007. |
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In the image on the left we
have grouped almost 75 Russian books and booklets
on UFOs and fortean subjects, received in a number of
parcels from our exchange partner across the Baltic Sea.
The collection includes
several extremely old and rare Russian books, even
a few
samizdat
publications |
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were printed with the help of carbon copy papers on type
writers and circulated in secrecy, during the Soviet
regime.
Mikhail Gershtein has recently, himself,
produced no less than four UFO-related books, all
published during 2006 and 2007. On the right is the
cover of one of them: Chto skryvayut ufologi,
which means What the ufologists hide. This is
about UFOs and their close relationship with paranormal
phenomena such as poltergeists and Marian apparitions.
Some connections that, maybe, some ET-oriented
ufologists would rather want to hide under the bed?
The several hundred
Russian books, magazines and clippings that we have
received from Mikhail Gershtein will form a special
Russian language section at the new AFU library,
probably to be inaugurated during 2009. |
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From Birgit Sälgström, Säter,
Sweden, Spring of 2007. |
| Swedish
veteran UFO researcher Birgit Sälgström has
donated a small collection of valuable materials to AFU.
The lot includes five articles / documents related to
earthquake lights and John S. Derr's 1989
revision of his earthquake lights bibliography.
There is also an analysis
report (from 2007!) of brick and coal samples
purportedly in contact with an unknown object (Portage
County, Ohio, April 16, 1966) plus two tapes (a
lecture by Jenny Randles and an interview tape on a
wellknown Swedish case). |
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From Didier Gomez, Graullet,
France, July 2007 |
Sending free sample archival
copies of your UFO-related works - in any language - to
AFU is a simple way of getting free PR and internet
links for your projects and publications! |
Didier
Gomez of
UFOmania Magazine is a great fan of the AFU
archives. This is the second box we have received from
him of materials produced in France, both by his
society, the Planète OVNI, and by other sources.
In the picture you can
see copies of Planéte OVNI's
guide for field investigators (modeled from a
similar work by SOBEPS); Didier Gomez own study of UFOs
over the province of
Tarn, and also AFU's very first copy of the
French COMETA report. |
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From Robert Lesniakiewicz,
Poland, June 2007 |
| Polish
ufologist Robert Lesniakiewicz has written a book
on the Scandinavian 1946 ghost rockets and their
possible relationship to Russian weapon experiments
after WWII.
Writes Lesniakiewicz to
Clas Svan: "I'd like to prove that most of "the ghost
rockets" were German V-missiles fired by the Russians to
blackmail Swedes and Danes. Russia wanted them to allow
their warships a free route from the Baltic to the
Atlantic without any control or limit. Moreover, they
wanted to force the Swedish government to lend a large
sum of money on very good (for the Soviets, of course!)
conditions. But the Swedes DID NOT agree with the Soviet
propositions. In fact this was the first battle of the
Cold War!" |
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| Comment
by Anders Liljegren: Seeing this book, further
underlines, I think, the acute need for a Swedish
'inside' presentation to give a more complete picture of
the 1946 phenomenon, as mirrored in the official Swedish
archives sources. Lesniakiewicz uses some such sources
received from Svahn, but mostly newspaper sources
derived from Loren Gross's works on the ghost rockets.
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From Sven Andersson,
Falköping, June 2007 |
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Another regular donor is
Sven Andersson - book collector and former librarian
from Falköping in the south of Sweden.
On the left, some
fifty books donated from Sven's library of 'mint
condition' copies, incl. more than a handful of new
titles/new editions. Among them, the hardcover of
Curtis Peebles excellent book Watch the skies - a
chronicle of the Flying Saucer myth.
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| By the
way, purely as a numbers exercise... we've
just counted the number of volumes listed in the active
database of the AFU reference library. It currently adds
up to 9.616 copies of 6.701 different titles and
editions... We have two or more copies of 2.074
different titles/media. The database now also includes
VHS, CD and DVD recordings and we have also started to
include wanted titles. |
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From Sven Olov Larsson,
Borlänge, Sweden, June 2007 |
| Sven
Olov Larsson is a Swede who has been a collector of
UFO books and magazines since 'the early ages'. We've
just received from him, via Clas Svahn, a fine
collection of magazines, including a bound volume of
UFO-Nachrichten issues # 1-100. Unfortunately the
volume lacks issues 32, 39 and 57 but those are
previously in our holding as individual copies.
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| Sven Olov
Larsson also donated a number of other
international UFO-related magazines. The most unique
were probably the Danish SUFOI's UFO-Nyt Junior
magazine, a complete collection of all six issues from
1964-65.
A large percentage of the
items in the picture were new to our collection.
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From Rowdy Farrago Records,
UK, March and June 2007 |
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UFOs and
(believed) extraterrestrial visits are powerful
images in the popular culture of the post-WWII era. AFU
can only cover a tiny little stream of the huge river
that constitutes the social every-day reality of 'our'
phenomenon, in 'reality' and in science fiction.
There are, for instance,
hundreds of musical records that touch the subject of
'alien visitors' on some level.
We have recently received
two hard rock records, performed by a group
called
Destructors666 where there are tracks like "Flying
Saucer Men". We have a mild tolerance for hard rock,
except, maybe, for when it comes through the floor of
our upstairs neighbor, but recordings like these are
very welcome to be preserved with our collection!
Thank you very much!
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From Alf Tollhag, June 2007 |
| Among the
regular contributors to the AFU archives are several
previous board members of the well known (if not
'famous') Swedish UFO group GICOFF (Gothenburg's
Information Center for Unidentified Flying Objects)
which existed between 1968 and 1978.
Alf Tollhag was one of
the members of their board and who has now contributed
books and magazines from his private library, with Clas
Svahn as intermediary.
AFU has previously
received a large share of GICOFF's magazine archive,
their book library, their correspondence and UFO report
archives, their clipping files and many unique photos.
We even have a file of the print originals for their
magazine GICOFF-Information!
(Sorry for the bad photo
on the right, unfortunately the material from Alf
Tollhag has now been dispersed among our different
shelves and cannot easily be grouped together again for
a better snapshot). |
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From the Stockholm UFO Society,
June 2007 |
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The Stockholm UFO
Society (Stockholms UFO-Förening) paid their most
recent visit to AFU on April 21 (see the Recent
visitors page) and has since decided to place some
of their holdings of Scandinavian UFO magazines with
AFU.
Despite AFU's good
coverage of Nordic magazines we did find a couple of
newcomers to our 'master' collection and the remainder
will be 'on reserve' or used as extras for exchange.
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From Ole Jonny Braenne, Oslo,
Norway, February 2007. |
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From our foremost Norwegian
friend and benefactor comes yet two big parcels of
materials for the archives and library.
On the right eleven new
titles (or editions) from the 'phenomenal' literature.
In the picture: Michael Salla's The Greada
Treaty (on Eisenhower's claimed meeting with ETs in
1954), two catalogs from Krause Publications on
UFO and SF toys and paraphernalia, and the 1946 edition
of Harold T. Wilkins' book on Mysteries of
ancient South America. |
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From Leif Havik, Norway, Febr.
2007 |
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During the
1980s - the magic era of the Hessdalen lights -
Leif Havik played a prominent role in Norwegian
ufology. He even wrote a book about the phenomenon. He
is now a passive bystander of ufology and more of a 'New
Age' activist with courses in meditation and "self
development". See his Norwegian web page
here.
Through the intermediary
of fellow Norwegian ufologists Erling Strand and
Ole Jonny Braenne, Havik has donated a collection
of eleven UFO- & phenomena-related books. A selection of
the titles which were added to our library collection,
can be seen to the left. |
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From Barry King, Southampton,
March 2007. |
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A recent article by David
Clarke on AFU, in
Fortean Times, has brought us several new
donations from the UK.
Barry King sent us a
parcel with this interesting 'mini-collection' that
included several new items, for instance The Complete
Roswell UFO Encyclopedia. |
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| Barry King's
suggestion that we would 'throw away' items we would not
need is not an advice we will follow! Instead, some
surplus magazines will be circulated to other collectors
and researchers, or sold on eBay to generate new
resources. We very seldom throw things away!
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From Rod B. Dyke, Bain-bridge
Island, the state of Washington, USA, February 2007 |
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A new year that has started
with several great donations and exchange parcels
arriving.
From our exchange partner
Rod B. Dyke who manages the Archives for UFO
Research and Information Service (AUFOR) on the US West Coast has arrived
no less than six big and
heavy parcels of materials: a huge archival documents collection,
magazines and microfilms. |
| We will present this
unique material in more detail when we have had the
chance
to go through and organize it in detail.
We are
starting off with this great collection of the contactee-oriented
newsletter Star Beacon (published by
Earth Star Publications) of which Rod sent us a nearly
complete collection from 1988 up to 2006. I am bringing
this collection to the archives today (March 15) for
cataloguing in our database. This is a valuable addition
since it documents the contemporary contactee-abductee
scene in the US. Frankly, we didn't know about this
magazine before! (Shame on us).
Presentations of the remainder of the
material that has arrived (not only Rod's six parcels
but several from Mikhail in St. Petersburg, from Barry
and Bill in the US, and Ole Jonny in Oslo), will follow during this spring when we have
finished the eBay sale period to bring in the needed
money to ship exchange parcels to Rod and all you
others.
We are moving ahead as
fast as we can despite the fact we will be moving all of
our collections during the coming year, or so, at the
same time as we are trying to accomplish the regular
archives work and answer requests for information! Thank
you all for your patience. |
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