No one has counted the hundreds and hundreds of hours we have now put in to regain our strength after the July 22 storm. Luckily, damages on collections were minor and only included three soaked books that had to be tossed away and a donation of (mostly non-unique) magazines from our Norwegian friend Ole Jonny Braenne. These items were temporarily kept directly on floors as the rain hit. The real drawback appeared later when our three fate-stricken facilities were inspected by representatives of our landlords. Most flooring and skirting-boards in the three places were soaked and has to be removed and the venues dried out before new flooring. Sort of a night-mare for an archive with lots of heavy shelves resting on the floors.

While depressing at first, the catastrophe made us look for new alleys to handle the AFU future. With help from the landlord we soon found a nice above-ground-level venue, close to several of our basements, to help us start a chain of castling maneuvers. Our 'work base', the 'A' facility was evacuated in mid-November and a gang of ten people spent one Saturday moving our report and clipping collections, plus six work-places to the new over-ground venue. The old one is currently being dried out with dehumidifiers working around the clock for weeks. Early in 2012 the 'A' facility will become the 'new Evans library' to house the psychology and folklore parts of the great Hilary Evans book collection. The nice thing will be that our two libraries will now be in two adjacent houses, just across a yard. Our librarian Ingrid will probably move into the Evans library with her cataloguing department.

If you are curious about what's happening here at AFU you always have the Clas Svahn blog and the Håkan Blomqvist blog to inform you. Both written in Swedish but with a lot of pictures for those who want a general feeling about AFU's work. You can always use Google translate to aid with the Swedish!

The soul of Hilary Evans left this plane of existence on July 27. I found this photo in a small booklet, Little book of BIG ideas, published in 2009 as a promotion for the Mary Evans Picture Library. A little fuzzy, when scanned from the printed page, yet I think it says so much about the great couple that created the fabulous picture library which financed one of the finest private book & magazine libraries, anywhere in the world. Every day I stand in wonder over the old 19th century volumes on spiritualism, folklore, apparitions of the Virgin Mary, magic and the Devil, the witchcraft trials during the 15th century, or the haunting of British estates; or the more modern collection of books on psychology, religious sects and psychiatric maladies that might explain some of our elusive reports. The Evans collection helps us widen our horizons. Everything he collected seems relevant in a broader picture of our world and of our beliefs. Read Clas Svahn's English blog on Hilary or the obituaries, here and here. I will always remember the cozy and silent man who spent a night with us in 1996 and probably told his Mary, as he got home, about our two lively Westie dogs.

Jan-Eric was an active UFO-Sweden field investigator in the counties bordering on Norway, in the west, about two decades ago, but has since moved with his family to Finspång (just 20 kilometers from Norrköping and the archives). We gave them a tour of the archives, but I had to break with the company not to miss out on the nice Sunday lunch provided by my sister, where we also met my sister's son, his new fiancée and their two nice dogs. My fiancée got the 'dog sickness' again, wanting us to buy a another dog when I go into pension. I once happened to say that I could have the dog as an 'archives dog', with me to AFU, each day, when I start to work there. She doesn't forget that glimpse of hope of having a dog.

About 15.30 Clas came in a rented car from Mariestad with a heavy piece of furniture that AFU will help keep safely under roof for some time. He also brought some books and archives materials, including another donation from Finland. More to come on this! Tobias also came by to handle over the new AFU lap top computer which I will use for 'mobile cataloguing' throughout our facilities. In stead of carrying materials to the library computer for cataloguing I will bring the computer to where we presently have materials that need cataloguing. Pictures from the day on Clas' blog.

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I also paid a first visit to our new audio digitization 'centre' where Claes and Oskar just started transforming hundreds of roll-to-roll audio tapes from the BUFORA archives to a digital format. The two merry guys have made a bright start of it all with some of the smaller tapes from BUFORA meetings as a first test batch. Thanks to 'Bebbe', a third guy in the gang (Håkan L who worked previously for us is the 4th guy in this knowledgeable 'electronic technology' gang), we 'borrow' two work places in their facility against a regular monetary compensation and against us paying for an internet broadband connection in the facility. This facility is behind the door next to our own 'D' archive. Maybe we should call it 'D-b'? Five days a week two BUFORA tapes will continuously be on their tape recorders to be migrated into their computers. This will go on for two years, unless the guys get regular jobs. Next we need to acquire some hefty hard disk drives - audio files suck a lot of memory space!

This is a win-win situation first suggested by Bebbe where we can employ two of his friends on 'Phase 3' jobs, paid for by the government and also give them something back, including something meaningful to do (compared to less meaningful 'Phase 3' positions). In the pictures above (left) Oskar's station with the tape recorder inherited from BUFORA and (right) Claes sitting in front of his own work station with his own private tape recorder. The guys generously lend much of their equipment and technical skills to the project. This is so great!

Talked to my uncle and we agreed that I will finish off my work helping him out with his economy next weekend. He is a very suspicious old fellow so we had better part ways with each other. Then I walked in the sunshine to AFU where I met Håkan B who had just finished building the first four Billy shelf sections (out of 34 that we just got) and had filled them with books from the boxes that Clas and Anders P packed in Hilary's London home in late November. Håkan soon headed home, after a couple of hours of work, and I took up the baton. After some cataloguing, and sorting out another heap of Evans books for Ingrid to catalogue; after a coffee break with a semla; and after carting one of our new computers and the BUFORA tape recorder from the 'C' to the 'A' facility (where we will establish a digitizing work station), I went back to the 'E' facility to continue unwrapping another four Billy shelves for Håkan to work on, probably tomorrow.

After lunch I biked to AFU, today, to take delivery of 34 new IKEA Billy shelves that came by lorry. We will surely have a lot to do during the coming weeks, building our new library. Håkan B. has posted some first pictures on his Swedish blog.

It is of course a curious feeling to see your own dear old job on display like this, open for someone else to seek. My early pension at 61 is getting closer with each day! I will have absolutely no trouble finding other things to do but I will miss my job very much.

Biked to AFU after work. First, I checked up a long sale offer listing from a French researcher where I found about a dozen items that would of interest for us to buy. Then, I catalogued a bag full of Clas Svahn (mint condition) book titles, checking them against our book database & shelves. This small collection comes from the home of Clas' deceased father and mother and all are autographed by the author. All were added to the collection with previous copies, not autographed, withdrawn for our sale shelves. I also had the time for a walk to some of our other facilities to lighten them up as a preparation for tonight's showing of the archives. For about two hours we entertained a company of Håkan's workmates from the Norrkoping community library with information on AFU, our history, our aims and our work - and of course a grand tour of our facilities. You can find some pictures on Håkan's blog here. A very nice evening ending with cider and canapés, discussing UFOs around our coffee table.

Leif gave us all an authoritative crash-course of the work procedure for scanning the BUFORA, Contact International and FSR files that he has developed. Leif is an effective guy who also managed to install and put into work two of the three eMachines computers delivered at our door, shortly before noon. He also put into work our second A3 scanner connected to one of the eMachines.

The second new PC was installed by Leif at Elisabeth's workplace replacing my 'ex-computer' (one of them) that I once donated to AFU (two PC-generations back!) and on which we have kept the ScanCat reports database during past years. Finally we will have some modern gear! While Leif was doing this, I tried to figure out how to activate the Microsoft Office program suite on Leif's and Elisabeth's new PC's. It seems there is but one solution, we will have to crawl to the cross and buy a Microsoft 'volume license' for a larger number of AFU machines, maybe as many as ten. I found a local dealer and will get their prices tomorrow. During lunch eight of us walked to the Hageby shopping center to have us a good meal paid for by money from the unemployment agency. Thank you, 'Arbetsförmedlingen'!

Clas reports on his blog that his Mac computer has died completely after six years of service. A computer that crashes is like an old friend, or family member, who suddenly leaves this world. First you get angry (why...? and why at this very moment...?); then you start to morn; then the work to recover all that was lost begins. I understand that Clas has lost parts of his most recent book and will have to back track what he has just done.

Then I biked to the 'C' archive to meet Leif and Benny (after emptying the post box and a lunch in Hageby). I received their 'wish lists' of new things needed in the project. Of course one or two computers for scanning/sound digitizing, a hard disk drive for Benny, waste paper baskets, electric cabling, and some other office equipment. No problem since we received our monthly contribution from the unemployment agency today! That money should cover everything we need for the second phase of our digitizing project. When, later, UFO-Sweden's money arrives (for invoices sent to them) I will also order some 30-35 Billy book cases for the new Evans library. Not having to dig deep into once own pockets, or crawling on our knees before our group of sponsors, is quite an unusual feeling. To be self-sufficient with a good portion of money is a revolution in our world. We are not talking about "millions" here but just the "regular" money we have always needed, but never had. Until now.

Teamwork. The cataloging of the Hilary Evans collection is a fine example of teamwork. Håkan B has, first, sorted the UFO books in carrier bags. The bags are then carried over to the main library by Sven-Olov and Susanne. Then I, myself, have done a preliminary sort where books are divided between "new titles", "probably new titles" and "well known titles/editions". The last group (probable 2nd, 3rd, etc copy for our collection) is then cared for by Ingrid, while I spend more time on the first two groups. I sort out letters, postcards and publisher advertising found inside the books. After Ingrid has catalogued new 2nd/3rd copies and, maybe, finds that this is the 4th copy, not needed by us, I again take another look at the book.

I take it to the shelf where the previous three copies are kept and compare the quality of the book itself, the quality of the dust jacket, possible dedications by the book's author, and other conditions, before I decide which of the four copies at hand should be sorted out to be sold on eBay. This is a time consuming job. Mint condition books are nearly always kept by us, while worn books are put on sale. But there are also cases where we already have three mint condition books and get another 4th book of the same quality that can be sold for good money for the foundation. Finally, I take all "for sale" books over the 'C' facility where Håkan sorts them into the proper alphabetical order on our sale shelves. Hopefully soon we will be able to market a fine selection of books for international customers.

To the left, close by Clas's hip are the many boxes crammed with invaluable BUFORA roll-to-roll tapes from lectures and witness interviews since the early 1960s, and the BUFORA report archives. There is also parts of the Contact International/Lord of Clancarty archives including some early magazines which are absolutely unique. We opened some of the boxes to get a taste of it all... The E library is full of boxes but empty from shelves. In couple of months we hope to have a full set of new IKEA shelves here. With time we hope to have organized the combined Evans-AFU library of books on mainly parapsychology, occultism and religion here, as a 'daughter' library to our main library.

Did some scanning. First documents concerning a case from the 1946 wave where a luminous ufo collided with and cut off electric cables. Christer will try his hands on an English translation. Then I scanned three recent news clippings which I sent off to subscribers on our yahoo mailing list. We have some ten subscribers. More would be welcome. Swedish clippings on UFOs are getting rarer and rarer with each year. Compared at least to all the Wisconsin clippings that Rich Heiden sends us through his mailing list. Some weekends my mailbox is swamped with 20-25 clippings from Wisconsin! I have a feeling that much of Swedish media interest in UFOs now comes through radio/TV media so I sent off an inquiry to Infopaq, today, for the cost of a widened surveillance of media. But, I doubt this, since only the news papers cost us 2.300 SEK each months. Dreaming of more is probably just a dream.

Walked to the AFU library after work, bringing with me, on the way from the 'E' archive, two bags crammed with heavy Evans books. Håkan B had been off from his work this afternoon and had taken over some truly fantastic heaps of books I have never heard about nor seen. Where did Hilary find all these? Everyday is a Christmas now at AFU. I was almost dressed to walk home when one of our friends phoned to suggest two seemingly very competent persons for our outstanding "Phase 3" positions. His proposals were extremely interesting and I will follow up on them during the weekend and try to arrange meetings with these new people to check them out. All in all we now have five people who are interested in our two free positions. With the vacant position after Håkan L we are probably looking for three persons.

Then wrote four invoices to UFO-Sweden (their agreed share of clipping subscription costs, service costs for the AFU copier, postage costs for materials sent to UFO-Sweden, and the rents 2011 for the UFO-Aktuellt magazine store). Then planned book cases to be bought for the new 'E' site. Made a simple drawing from the measures that I took a couple of weeks ago and then managed to get (in theory) 34 book cases into the 30 square meters. It's all possible if we also use the floor effectively. It will add some 150 shelf meters to our library capacity. We will order from IKEA as soon as we have the money.

Catalogued a couple of dozen books and booklets from the Evans collection. Can't keep my fingers from that project now. It's such a fun to see and feel all those items I have (at the most) just seen in pictures or advertisements. Some of them are completely unknown in the combined 120+ years of ufo knowledge shared by Sven-Olov, Håkan and me. This is unique! Finally walked home after sunset and bought three bottles of soup (ready-made, frozen) on the way for me, sister and fiancée. Sister and fiancée had spent the afternoon on the internet doing genealogical research.

I have used this evening to do some updates to board member Andreas Ohlsson's presentation on AFU people and also posted some new pictures on that page.

Arriving at AFU I found Håkan B laboring in the slow-clearing business outside our 'D' archive (see photo). Me, Håkan B and Håkan L had a warm cup of coffee and a nice semla each (picture, right). Håkan L has now left AFU and his work on our clipping collection to work for Ericsson in Katrineholm (the phone company) but was at home today because we all have a holiday.

Then Håkan B and I headed for the 'E' (Evans) archive to fetch new bags of books for the cataloguing project. All in all, we packed eight full bags of extremely fine books from the Evans collection and carried them down to the 'B' library. I did a couple of hours of cataloguing there before walking home. Håkan and I found many books we had never even heard of. Hilary seemingly had the economic resources to buy almost all things made available on the international market during the 1960s when we were poor students. The remainder of this day I will spend on answering emails and scanning articles to respond to international info requests.

Some books surprise you when you open them. Many are dedicated to Hilary by its author(s). Some include letters to and from Hilary, even pictures. I have already assembled a small stack of things to archive outside of the book collection, in a Hilary Evans personal file. I have left five half-meter high piles of mostly hardbacks for Ingrid to work on, eventually. Most of them I recognize, some are probably new editions for us. And...it's only a start. Tomorrow, I plan to fetch another load of boxes from the 'E' site so that I can continue this extremely interesting work during the coming days.

For the moment I would like to direct your attention to this French blog, maintained by Benjamin Dupuis, with a lot of historical material. I saw for instance an original French interview with famed humanoid witness Marius Dewilde from 1954. Nice!

Biked to AFU through the snowy townscape. Roads slippery so had to take it slow and be very careful when changing direction. Håkan B had already been at work for a few hours in the 'D' archives. He is the morning guy while I am the evening guy. During the past fortnight he has done wonders on our personal and organizational files, sorting and tidying everything up.

We joined for a cup of coffee at the 'A' archives, then I went over to the 'B' library to catalogue some remaining magazines and books while Håkan continued in the 'D' archives. I solved a couple of 'catting' problems that were waiting on the library's sorting desk. Wanted to make space for the first batch from the Evans collection. Then took a bag of Swedish surplus books (from the Kjellson donation) over to the 'C' archive, for the sales shelves.

From there I went to the new 'E' (for Evans) archive where I investigated the status of our two wheel carts. The London shipment on Dec. 13 had, more or less, wrecked them both. The newer green one has a puncture, I tried to pump it up and thought I had succeeded but when I had loaded two heavy boxes on it the puncture was there again! So, I had to change cart for the yellow one, which no longer can balance so well. Despite that it's still OK.

The cardboard boxes packed by Clas and Anders P in London are a little too heavy for my back so it will be wise to divide the contents of two boxes into three, before carrying them up to the street level and putting them on our carts for the transport some 200 meters to the main 'B' library. I carted four 'restored' boxes. Built small mountains of books on our sorting table for Ingrid to start on, this coming week. Below, the first batch of Evans books with quite a number of 'unknowns' (meaning: new titles I do not immediately recognize from previous cataloguing), directly on the table, in the front: (How many such pictures have we posted by now...?)

Worked some hours on updating this web, including a completely new version of our Book collection page. New recent pictures from a 'new' and expanded library. Took away a lot of unnecessary texts and alternatives on the right-hand menu. And posted links to two new up-to-date versions of our Library inventory on same page. Can hardly believe we have such a huge library!!? Håkan B has been hard at work during the past month, or two, with creating chubby texts that nicely divide the books by subjects.

We spent a nice New Year's evening with our friends who had to leave one hour before midnight. Their dog, like most dogs, does not tolerate the fireworks and needed a walk before all hell broke out. Being very sensible to all kinds of noises, myself, I sympathize with the dog race. If they could decide everyone would use silent UFO balloons but that would obviously take away the fun some people feel when they can create deafening noises.

Håkan and Clas have both posted their positive reviews of the year 2010 on their respective Swedish blogs, here and here. They both mention the great Hilary Evans donation that sort of 'crowned' the end of a very successful year. We are all trying to come down-to-earth with the thought of having such a great collection to care for during 2011...

Myself I hope to go into pension (or at least reduce my level of 'professional' work) next summer. I have no doubt that I can occupy my 24 hours, 365 days a year. Besides sleeping and reading some books that I haven't had the time for the last 20 years, I am choosing between making detailed written project lists for my after-professional-work period, or just lettings things happen in the order that they appear before my very eyes...

I think I have discovered that the second method is the most effective, it's sort of an old man's first wise thought... No need to push oneself to cardiac arrest, so I will pick up the projects as they come along. There is one limit I am putting, however, I am only going to engage in projects that are interesting and worthwhile to myself and my own way of thinking. I do not intend to let myself be led by other people's (sometimes) high-flying ideas.

The archival functions of AFU are at the very centre of my thoughts. We need to be good at archiving and creating new information technology-based search systems that can help people find the info they need for their research. Finding the needle in the haystack. We are not going to digitize everything, we will not attempt to do the impossible. The really curious researchers will still have to board the plane or train heading for Norrköping, Sweden. That is how it still works in every archive, all around the world. There is no replacement for hard labor!!

It is our intention that well in place, here, researchers will find well-ordered and interesting detail files never to be found in their entirety anywhere on the internet. It's not a negative thought, just a realistic assessment that we will never have the work-force to digitize the many millions of pages we have. And if we are to digitize parts of our collection (which we will) the material will, first of all, have to be ordered manually - or at least in a theoretical model - before digitizing can be effective. Happy new year!

Håkan, Sven-Olov and Susanne was today's AFU crew and we were also visited by Cristoffer, a young student writing an essay on the work of UFO-Sweden. Pictures from today on Håkan's blog here.

Watched an interesting documentary on the American Stealth aircraft on our new TV-10 channel. They are not unbeatable!

AFU this time of the year, between Christmas and New Year, is empty except for three of us volunteers: Sven-Olov, Håkan and me. We were all there today for a couple of hours today. I 'ferried' a lot of things between our different sites including the two new vacuum cleaners to the 'C' and 'E' facilities. Håkan was working on our personal/organizational files in the 'D' facility and Sven-Olov was doing his regular tasks in the 'A' site.

Spent an hour and more at the Media Markt store today. My sister came home with a new digital camera, my niece bought a DVD recorder and (myself) I bought two Philips vacuum cleaners for the 'C' and 'E' archives.

The lock to our new 'Evans' archive won't work at times and I went to my (professional) workmates office, close by, for help. Told Tuija - who is fighting with keeping all the tenants in the area happy and satisfied - that I needed help from the locksmith, not noticing that the locksmith was sitting silently right behind a pillar! So I got an immediate help; he followed me down to our facility to check up on the lock. It seems some parts in the lock will have to be changed for new ones to make it work better. Talked with Leif and Benny who need a new vacuum cleaner for the 'C' facility (and we need another in the 'E', too, for dusting off the Evans collection!) plus a new hard disk drive for Benny's augmenting collection of digitized sound files, now getting close to 1.000 files! It is important that we can keep his valuable work backuped all of the time. More AFU work at home. Walked slowly home, climbing over the small hills of snow in almost every street corner. After dinner I started to sort a large number of commercial & privately recorded CD discs (100+) that I have kept at home with the good intention to catalogue them to our book & media database. They have been in-th-queue for years but now decided it was time to let that particular project slip through my fingers for the moment and instead add it to our super-long list of 'AFU-things-to-do-in-the-future'. Anyway, I sorted the discs by category to somewhat aid anyone who needs to find anything in particular, in the haystack. All kinds of files on those discs: PDFs, audio files, video files, pictures. Most of them come from Clas Svahn, Mikael Sjöberg and Ole Jonny Braenne.

During the evening I booked a large number of bank payments to make AFU completely free from any possible debt on Dec 31/Jan 1, when the new year comes along. No less than 26 payments (!) will go out to our 'employees' and to companies & institutions that have provided goods and services to us, including 12.000 SEK to Schenker's (for the transport from London) and another company where we have bought 11.000 SEK worth of supplies for our shape shifting library.

This was 'E' day with the Evans library and BUFORA & Contact International archives arriving by lorry from the UK. The DB Schenker driver was a little curious about the secret load of eleven Euro pallets he had driven to an unknown UFO archive in Norrköping. He hardly knew beforehand that he was taking a small part in preserving several of the finest phenomena-related collections in the world. As you can see from the picture below - and at Håkan's blog here - Sweden is all covered with snow. We all fighted with the snow, the cold air and the super-heavy boxes packed by Clas Svahn and Anders Persson, in London.

In the picture to the right the proud group that 'did it', assembled after work. They had just carried 5 tons (!) or 230 (!) big boxes cram filled with books, magazines, audio tapes and report archives down the rather icy stairs into our new-painted facility. Standing (from the left) Leif Åstrand, Sven-Olov Svensson, Håkan Landin, Susanne Mårdberg and Elisabeth Booth. Sitting on their knees, front row: Patrik Carlsson, Benny Dahl, Christina Klöfver and Håkan Blomqvist. And behind the camera one guy who had just collected the keys to our 7th facility so that the material could be locked in. We did the job in just one hour and 15 minutes. Having completed our work we all went to a well-earned traditional Lucia celebration with coffee, cakes and the kind of red wine we call 'glögg', and then we all went home to rest, straighten out our aching backs and maybe take a needed shower. Great work, everyone!

Did another credit write up on Recent donations --- see the one on the German IGPP, second from the top as I write this (I have a feeling that relative position will change very soon, though...). The IGPP has a fantastic library/archives on anomalistic phenomena.

Left work rather early in the afternoon and spent four hours at AFU mostly carrying (in plastic bags) new collections between our different facilities. Books to the library from our 'C' facility to be catalogued, surplus books on the return leg from the library to our sales department in the 'C' facility. Collections of VHS and DVD videos over to the 'D' facility, and a cryptozoology clipping collection to the clippings department in our 'A' facility - and so on. I also had the time to catalogue a small 'pre-view' of French books from the Hilary Evans library brought here by Clas the day before yesterday. I guess some of the specialized books in Hilary's library will be rather 'tricky' to code by subject so that they can be put on the appropriate shelf. My guess is that we will have to sub-divide and move about with some of our Ufocodes when confronted with the realities of the extremely rich Evans collection. Our Schenker representative phoned to report that the Evans library is now on a ship on the North Sea with expected arrival in Gothenburg tomorrow.

Clas Svahn came by car from Stockholm bringing a lot of material, mainly two collections: the book library from Lennart Kjellson (a wide area of subjects from air historical literature to books his father Henry used when writing his books on Egyptian ancient technology - see Nov 26..) and the Cynthia Hind's files from her investigations in Zimbabwe. He also brought a large tape recorder donated by BUFORA for our common digitizing project. Clas, Leif and me had some nice time while planning the continued scanning, then Clas and I went in his car to the library restaurant where we also met Tobias. After we had returned from lunch Clas showed us pictures from the work done at the Hilary Evans house (the house is now sold to another family) and at other places during the recent UK tour. Anci suggested I should put up more photographs of people here. She's right, so here she is, from today's coffee break with Rickard (sipping coffee), Anders O and Susanne at the table and Håkan L working with the clippings collections in the background, right behind Anci:

At noon Håkan B and I biked in the snow to the library restaurant and then I went to Kjell & Co. to buy a new Plexgear USB tape machine for Benny's work and then to Clas Olsson to buy six new file folders for the recently acquired Sundberg picture collection. I spent an hour sorting these pictures into five of the folders and discovered there were a lot of 'architecture' in the pictures from Sundberg's travels across the world. I who love pictures of nice buildings - but maybe not very relevant for our UFO/fortean archives?!  I also met Anders H, who came with Bertil W from the ArbetslivsResurs company that places people with us on account of the social security system. Anders will be a work trainee with us for 4 x 3 hours each week for at least five weeks in December and January. I will take a day of vacation from my regular work on Tuesday to introduce him in the work.

(Before Dec 1 see "2010", menu on the left.)