After much hesitation a biking tour into the country took place late this afternoon (after I had checked the weather forecast on www.yr.no). Not one drop of rain fell on me, but I was rather exhausted after roughly 50 kilometers on my bike. On the way home I stopped by the AFU post box at the gas station and also devoured a curry-tasting tutti-frutti pizza at the nearby pizzeria. I had the opportunity to see and photograph the two groups of community houses in Ljunga (left) and Kuddby (right) where we (my prof. work) will take over some administration on October 1. Some of the flats are free to hire, so if you are interested in a country house and maybe (also) some work with AFU...

Then I spent a few hours carting the big batches of surplus magazines (created by recent donations from the UK, Austria and Sweden) from the library over to the 'D' mags archive for sorting & storage. Probably some 100 kilos, quite a sweaty job! Just as I had loaded the last two boxes on the cart, the left wheel broke down on it, and I had to fetch our other, smaller cart. Shall have to find a much better quality cart that suits our needs better. Yet another project on my lengthy list.

Lunch in Hageby where I bought copying paper, pencils and erasers for Ingrid (our librarian) and a lot of other needed office supplies. Nice to be able to buy such things without taking the money directly our of your own pockets! I am now, instead, setting that private money aside for an early pension.

Left AFU, as usual, about 19.00 hours and went home to find a suitable scanner on the internet. Seems there are roughly three classes of A3 scanners. More or less decided to buy one from the 'middle' class that will cost us about 5.700 SEK. We expect to keep the scanner rolling throughout the days and months so we need some quality.

Nine in the evening our sponsor friend Bertil came from Stockholm to spend the night reading report files in the 'A' archive. He promised to sponsor UFO-Sweden & AFU with 17.000 SEK for a a new server that, eventually, can be used for customer downloads over the internet. He also brought with him a number of interesting books including the new book on the Woodrow Derenberger case written by Derenberger's daughter Taunia Bowman. Unfortunately our copier crashed and Bertil's plan to copy a large number of documents failed. The copier wanted more toner, and I managed to crash the only toner package we had while trying to install the new toner.

In the afternoon (after I had emptied the AFU post box and had a nice lunch in Hageby) Håkan B. and I met with journalist Jan (Ove) Sundberg, his brother Kjell and Jan's friend Ingvar for a tour of the archives and reminisces of old times. Our guests had some remarkable UFO sightings to relate to us. A lot has happened since Jan last visited us almost twenty years ago: AFU has developed from two facilities to six, Jan has had his rows with us all (started by a review I wrote about his Phantom submarines book), Jan has been on the edge of death by cancer in his spine, and AFU has bought materials in four-five batches from Jan's rich collections. I had the occasion to tell Jan that his Swedish abductee interview tapes, bought in one of the batches from him, have been digitized and permanently saved for posterity by AFU. A rather unique material that Jan never found the time to publish in the book on Swedish abductions he projected. Pictures from Saturday's meetings on Håkan's blog here.

After the visit by Jan I spent another couple of hours alone at AFU, ferrying donated materials between the AFU facilities and I sorted & catalogued books & magazines recently donated by Swedish ufologists Tora Greve and Roger Ersson.

Some of the evenings I biked to AFU to work with the continued sorting, distributing (between our (now) six facilities) and cataloguing of incoming collections... One of the fine book collections came from Englishman John Hanson and included never-seen UFO books by abductee Elsie Oakensen and Scotsman Ron Halliday. One evening Håkan B and I worked together on clearing up some things in our 'C' facility, carrying a lot of surplus things to the waste deposit. Few of us have a good feeling about putting new collections, received, into ugly age-old file folders that look like they already had two previous lives! To reduce transports along the street, we need to think out a clearer system for what we should collect (and not!) and in which of our six facilities one particular type of material should be stored. Sometimes it seems we are working like ants, running up and down the street! Having it all just under ONE ceiling would be a dream situation but we can't afford that. Yet!

I was happy when people called me out of 'the mine' and into the fresh air to help with unloading the four second-hand book cases at our library, a few houses away. We will evaluate if we can find places for some of them in the (already crammed) library. We need the shelf capacity but may have to move some of these shelves to any of our other facilities. After all unloading we all went to a downtown 'Mongolian' restaurant and paid a hefty price for a rather simple meal (with a lot of waiting). (We should have gone to Hageby to have a decent Swedish 'husmanskost' (plain food) at a better price). Some of us returned to the AFU main facility where we waited while Clas went to fetch a new collection which turned out to be a great surprise with lot's of early pictures from the early Swedish history of ufology. Excellent find!

On Wednesday the 4th I had a vacation day off from work. Met with Leif Åstrand to build the remaining four shelf sections of the magazine store. It all started with a failure - I had to bike to Hageby and buy a saw so that we could shorten some of the shelves. Who had thought of all the pipes close to the ceiling? Anyway, we did the work in a couple of hours and after lunch I spent 4-5 hours transporting this and that between our different facilities (now six!) in between cataloguing work.

After this day's portion of semi-hard 'body' work I put my brain into use with cataloguing a number of books and magazines from the Sören Andersson collection (see my new report on Recent donations).

This weekend I will be in town for 100 % AFU work while fiancée is at our summer house. So, after work I went to our new magazine store to build the first two Ivar shelves that will soon hold the 150-200 heavy boxes of unsold copies of UFO-Aktuellt magazines since 1980. I had spoken to Leif - our upcoming Phase 3 co-worker, if only the unemployment agency bosses would return from their vacations and make a decision about him... - about spending one or two days together on this project, next week. On second thought, I saw, on the horizon, that there wouldn't be enough time to build all of the 13 shelf sections before the lorry of magazines arrives on August 7. So I started building the shelves on my own. I figured out that each section can hold a maximum of 30 boxes. That will be heavy, so we will spread out the boxes and use the upper shelves for easier loads like screens from the old UFO-Sweden exhibitions.

After work I continued work on the Sören Andersson collection for 3-4 hours before biking home.

After work I emptied the post box on my way to AFU, where I spent a few hours doing a first rough sort of the magazines received from Sören Andersson.

We were first a little bit shocked when Sören didn't answer our calls at the door. It turned out he had gone out in the area to look for us and to guide us. We spent a nice hour talking to him about old memories while we carried heaps of books, magazines and some 40-50 colorful file folders to the car. You can see pictures of us and the collection at Håkan's blog here. Quite many elusive things in the collection! I made a mental decision to try and work myself through Sören's materials as fast as ever I can. A detailed report will follow in a few days.

In the latest issue Clas Svahn reports on the continued co-operation with Swedish Defence after Eva Bernhardsdotter has been appointed as the 7th woman/man-in-charge of the official military 'UFO bureau'. Eva has worked for many years in the US (with NASA and other institutions) and has now returned to Sweden and a position as a researcher with the FOI which handle the official UFO reporting since 1965. UFOs, of course, will only occupy a very small fraction of her work time.

Before turning off the light for the day I read a batch of Canadian Air Force document received fron Lise Theofanous in Toronto. Folio formats that are not very easy to find a suitable archiving for.

First, I carted a large number of IKEA Ivar shelves from our 'C' facility over to our new '165' facility, which we have rented for the UFO-Sweden magazine store. Took me some ten trips and three hours along the street, in the warm sunshine. Sweat, sweat (and even a little blood)! While I was doing this Håkan built four new white IKEA Billy book cases for our sales department. Pictures from our hard labor on Håkan's blog here. As we had moved the sales books into place (not sorted A-Z yet, though) we also put up two IKEA Ivar sections in the inner room, for storage.

I then spent 3,5 hours updating our book and magazine inventories with a number of very nice and interesting items brought her from the collections of Englishmen Hilary Evans and John Hanson. Some extremely unique additions, including many of Hilary's nice volumes of conference proceedings and bibliographies, typically in Hilary's orange-red bound volumes. Prides for our shelves!

I spent most of the afternoon in the library cataloguing small booklets that came with (primarely) the BUFORA donation. Some very fine additions that will eventually be found in our inventories.

The remaining part of the day I used for the Schoenherr magazine collections where I inventoried & catalogued the (about) 35 binders of MUFON UFO Journals (26 new issues in our inventory!) from the period 1974-2010. A fantastic addition (see photo below, left) but, but... who needs them now, when all of this has been scanned and digitized?? The same goes for the FSR's (right, below, also from Schoenherr) and BUFORA publications we have on our shelves. Waste of space?

After a lunch with fiancée at home I biked back to the archives and spent 2-3 hours cataloguing magazines from the Luis Schoenherr collection. Very nice professionally bound volumes of Flying Saucer Review and UFO-Nachrichten! Unlike some of the previous FSR bound volumes we have had donated to us, the one who did the job for Herr Schoenherr understood to include the front and back pages of the FSR issues where there is always much essential information! How does anyone think when they mutilate a magazine by cutting out and throwing away the front and back pages, as has been done in several cases of materials donated to us?? What kind of preservation is that?

There are several 'lab' rooms with modern computer gadgets for the kids, who seemed to just love it! There is also a hefty flight simulator that you can try for 50 kronor. If the archive-and-library had been open I would have left my fiancée alone in that lab, with her glowing eyes! Unfortunately, however, the 'knowledge area' was closed. I was otherwise curious about how they had arranged the library/archive but shall have to come back some other day. I always like to tap into what the professionals are doing. I am thinking of taking the train and bus some day this autumn to see the 1.000 meter archive and maybe bring some AFU colleague with me.

On our way home we stopped by at IKEA and discovered that they had probably withdrawn the 8 cm high KASSETT boxes we have always bought for our audio tape collection. I shall have to check this up - we need more of the boxes for effective preservation of our growing tape collection!

Fiancée drove me and sister back to town and I will sleep the night to Monday in my wide (and best) bed.

After lunch I spent several hours at the 'C' archive bringing more order into things. Our collection of surplus Swedish clippings, kept in 15 card board boxes, were placed on top of a five-section shelf, close to the ceiling, where they may be consulted (on a ladder) when needed (not more than once each year).

In the evening Tobias phoned and came by with the AFU economy file folders for the years 2005-2009 which he had audited, finding but one (minor) mistake. We talked over a coffee and consumed the final bits of the jam roll that Tobias' brother-in-law (Benny) had brought. After Tobias had left I brought another batch of UK magazines (first parts of Mantle collection) over to the library for cataloguing. A total of nine hours at AFU this day - then home.

This evening Håkan B and I met Leif Åstrand, an ex-ufologist (25-30 years ago) who is now back in Norrköping and out-of-work. He wants a 'Phase 3' two-year period with AFU. We could make good 'use' of his experience with UFO phenomena so we will go for it!

After work I biked to AFU and spent a few hours cataloguing the BUFORA collection, this afternoon the titles beginning with letters R, S and T. Some big holes in our collections plugged. Then biked to empty the post box. The usual mix of invoices, magazines, new clippings, plus the nice monthly requisition for money for the cost for our Phase 3 staff. As responsible for AFU's book keeping I will never get used to having a steady incoming flow of money - or will I..? Tobias Lindgren mailed me that he had audited the past five years of AFU book keeping and was ready to discuss it with me some evening soon. So then we can finally have our long awaited board meeting and get back on regular tracks with the AFU foundation. We are a very active board with almost daily contacts on the phone and by mail - yet we need to meet for deeper discussions and the necessary formalities!

A short day at work, just a few hours, before going to AFU and the continued work with cataloguing the BUFORA collection. Magazines starting with letters D-K, today. Rod Dyke mailed during the weekend pointing out that AFU is just lousy with sending exchange materials back to him and his AUFOR (which also means Archives for UFO Research) in Bainbridge Island (close to Seattle). Shall have to remedy this situation during the summer! By the way, Rod is busy sorting out the latest 1.000 kilo collection from the estates of Richard Hall and Donald Keyhoe.

In my picture below you can see Professor Anders Ynnerman of the university presenting the C centre to the 140+ workmates of mine, assembled on the bridges surrounding the centre and planetarium nicely situated by the water:

We were given a repeat performance of the Swedish King's opening procedure of the centre, just five days earlier, and sample shows of visualization films to be on the repertoire, most prominently a voyage to the end of the universe and back again. The evening ended with a nice dinner and a live show by Swedish artist/rock star Markoolio. A very nice evening that ended around midnight. The dome shows that I witnessed pushed new ideas into my head, where AFU could possibly provide the basic data for effectively visualizing UFO reports. If anything, UFO sightings are visual!

In the evening we combined my birthday with a nice AFU 'staff party' at a local restaurant. We were no less than 16 past and present co-workers! The nice dinner, paid for by AFU from our Phase 3 money, was a way of showing our gratitude to all those people that work for us. You can view photos from the occasion on Håkan Blomqvist's blog, here.

After biking to the post box, and a nice lunch at the new big Hageby Center ('the World's Centre', well, well...) with coffee, back to AFU. Prepared some new clippings for scanning and distribution on our 'AFU-Clippings' mailing list and then started to catalogue the BUFORA mags. Managed three-four batches of mags in the A to C span. Some VERY fine additions to our files!! Then home for the Eurovision Song Contest - this year without Sweden. First time we didn't make it... Will have to hold thumbs for Denmark or Norway then... Both of their contributions are written by Swedes, as are four other contributions! So Sweden rules, despite the failure for our domestic song.

In the picture the gang who cleaned our library today (left to right): Patrik, Elisabeth, Carina, Håkan and Susanne. We started out before nine in the morning when Patrik and Carina arrived from Åtvidaberg. Patrik is a regular borrower of books. He, and his lady friend, offered to help us clean up the dusty library, some months ago. An offer we readily accepted. With six pair of hands and the backup of Sven Olov, who helped with transports, we managed most of it in one day. We have some 70-80 book shelves so the task might seem monumental. We did it all quite systematically from the lamps down to the floor. The huge task was of course all the 11.000 books and documents that had to be moved before dusting the shelves. Four of us went to the new Hageby Centre for raggmunk as lunch (for an explanation, see April 6). I think I can say that we were all quite proud of our accomplishment by the end of the day. We proved that AFU is not just collection of dust! :-)  One of the first points on my list for the day was to move the contents of the three shelves where we have so far kept surplus books for sale over to our 'C' facility where we will now create sort of a 'sales department'.

Today I also credited the first part of the all the fine collection brought from the UK by Clas and Håkan E. See the Recent donations page for that. Clas Svahn reports, on his blog, that today he met Nils Dellgren who was an attaché for the Swedish Defence in Washington, in the 1950s, and got hold of the MERINT placard found on the bridges of every US navy ship at the time, according to which UFOs should always be reported. The MERINT original will soon pride one of the AFU walls.

On the Sunday Clas phoned that he had collected yet five banana boxes full of materials donated by one-time UFO-Sweden co-worker Roger Ersson which Clas would bring to our sorting facility on his way back from the Kalmar conference. Now the 'sorting facility' is completely crammed with new collections to sort and to catalogue!!!! Will keep us on toes throughout the summer. The Kalmar conference was a success despite low attendance (hot summer day + hockey games on TV, so...). In his talk, Clas disclosed the very latest cases he just had released from Swedish Defence, including a case of a 1949 ghost rocket that seemingly crashed up north. We Scandinavians so much wonder about the ghost rockets, especially why they are almost never spotted outside of Scandinavia! Why???

Then I went home to fetch a box of materials that had arrived from Rod Dyke in Seattle. An extremely valuable collection of cryptozoological magazines to complete the excellent donations we've received a couple of years ago from Janet and Colin Bord. Fiancée and me then went to our summer house in the evening but on the way out we collected yet another (!) box of material from Ole Jonny Braenne at the main post office. In the box: mostly VHS videos that Ole Jonny now probably has transferred to DVDs and 'dumped' on us. Well, we are literally swamped with materials right now!

Spent 6-7 hours in the afternoon/evening on AFU paperwork: emptying email box, answering emails, invoices, also updated Recent donations with yet another entry. A Frenchman from Grenoble has contacted us with exchange suggestions. I spent several hours checking his list against our holdings. I even biked to the library to check out the SCEAU collection not yet catalogued by Ingrid. Remains about 25 books and a number of magazines which we would be interested in. Also produced a list of 560 UFO cases from the Kalmar county in east Sweden where UFO-Sweden will have it's traditional national conference in just a few weeks. In the evening and early night there was the first thunder-storm this year.

Clas has posted breathtaking, detailed reports on his ten day UK tour on his Swedish blog. For the benefit of international readers, here's a résumé of the people and places Clas and Håkan E visited last week, and, (in brackets) some examples of collections made available to AFU: April 29: Ferry Gothenburg-Fredrikshavn, then car across Denmark to Esbjerg, ferry to the UK. April 30: Immingham to London by car to Hilary Evans (donated another big batch of materials), where night spent. May 1: visits to John Rimmer (magazines, tapes) and Judith Jafaar & Robert Rosamund (BUFORA mags collection donated to AFU), night spent. May 2: car to Rickmansworth to visit Edwin Joyce (discussions on scanning FSR archives, five boxes of materials), same day to Birmingham to visit John & Dawn Hanson (clippings, magazines, ufo reports, more to come next year), night there. May 3: car to Bristol area to see Robert Moore (magazines donated which he has already scanned), then via Glastonbury and Stonehenge and back to Hilary Evans where stayed the night. May 4: car to Bristol to visit Denis Plunkett (BFSB fame) and then to Manchester to Peter Rogerson (200 books donated), and then Philip Creighton, also Manchester, where night spent. May 5: Talks with Philip Creighton (magazines) and then on to Philip Mantle & wife in Pontefract (boxes of magazines, some 70 audio tapes). May 6: car to Oxford to see Frances Copeland and Geoff Ambler (Contact board members, 11 boxes for scanning, clipping collection, more next year), then back to London and Lionel Beer (return of pictures and scanned since last UK tour, new materials picked up for scanning), spent night again with Hilary Evans. May 7: Packing of all material, during discussions with Hilary Evans promises that AFU will receive his complete collection in the future. In the evening ferry back to Sweden. Now you can breathe again!!

While at it I will steal yet another photo from Håkan B's blog (right) with the Skaraborg UFO society assembled outside the archives. We welcomed Tage and Christina Bång and eight other members of the Skaraborg UFO society with coffee, bread & cookies. Tage is selling off his taxi business to become a pensioner - and hopefully find more time for local UFO investigations. Håkan and I split the group in two halves and took different routes between our facilities with them. As with most visitors we got the impression that they were very impressed with AFU's current work which was also documented by entries written in our guest book. After the tour we all went for a nice two hour meal at a downtown Chinese restaurant.

While at AFU, today, I had a phone call from Schenker's who had gotten the invoice for the Innsbruck-Norrköping shipment returned. Of course they had used our street address, where there's no mailbox, despite that I had pointed out that this wouldn't work. Also received SMS messages from Clas in London and phoned him after trying - & failing - to text a reply. Clas & Håkan E has received so many donations for AFU during their UK tour that he is now packing boxes at the Hilary Evans home that we will later order to be shipped to Sweden by lorry. After work I went to the grocery store to fetch a parcel of Polish magazines & books I had ordered through eBay.

The Schenker truck arrived by noon. Elisabeth, Susanne and Håkan L helped me unload the 17 heavy boxes of books & other things from the two pallets outside our "C" facility. I left the boxes unopened - despite the curiosity inside of me - and went downtown for a couple of hours work. Me and Håkan B spent four hours of the evening unpacking the heavy boxes. More details on the Schönherr collection - see Recent donations!

Almost one hour belated by road blocks in the Stockholm area, Clas Svahn arrived to unload a large batch of UFO materials, including a large number of new condition books, bought for a few dollars each from Bob Girard's Arcturus Books; the library of the Enköping UFO Society, which has been donated to us; and a new scanner eagerly awaited by Susanne for her scanning project. In the picture below (left-to-right): Håkan Blomqvist holding an example of illustrations from the GICOFF collection, Clas Svahn with a number of SF-UFO cartoon magazines he bought on Tradera, the Swedish eBay; and, to the right, Benny Dahl, our specialist in audio tape digitizing.

I had a phone call from Schenkers. The Schönherr collection has arrived at Malmö in the south of Sweden so it's only a couple of days before we have it here! I shall have to hurry up to empty the sorting shelves from what Clas has just brought here, to be able to concentrate on the Austrian collection for one-two weeks, before we have Clas and Håkan Ekstrand arriving back from their UK tour - probably with another downloaded Toyota. Everything seems stream-lined this spring!

This afternoon I have spent four hours at the archives. First, I dismounted our big working desk in the "A" facility and moved it over to the "C" (...quite some work for my biceps & back, but I did it!). Then I tidied up the floor slightly (hmm, more of that needed!) and started to assemble the two new IKEA office desks. In the process one of the metal structures for the underside of one desk fell right over one of my fingers. I roared out from the pain. The nail and top of the finger is now blue and aching. After regaining from the pain (I had to consol myself with a good cup of coffee), I finished the desks. As a last step I moved a sorting table over to the "C" facility. Despite the aching finger, I was satisfied with the result as can be seen on this picture.

I had just fetched the lunch pizza and an empty new cartoon from the local post office for a parcel to be sent to Mikhail in St. Petersburg, when I found Anders Berglund had arrived at archives HQs. Anders is a new, local field investigator for UFO-Sweden in the Dalecarlia province, which according to my statistics project from the 1980s was, and probably is, one of the most UFO-ridden areas in Sweden. Anders will be at AFU for three days to pick out a set of local cases (he also has a summer cottage in the Västerbotten province). I tried my best to guide him into the search through our database and the report files. The final point of the day was to pack the parcel of second-hand exchange publications for Mikhail in Russia. This time he will receive about 10 kilos of old International UFO Reporters, Skeptical Inquirer's and UFO Report's. I brought the parcel to the post office (read: grocery store) and hurried home to fetch another parcel from another post/grocery - my new Canoscan scanner.

Next part-project in the seemingly never-ending "New PC" scheme is the move of scanning & photoshop functions. Photoshop Elements to be installed (do I have a disc..?) as a first step. My old scanner will be dumped on the archives (wonder if it will ever be used again...?). Tonight's pensum is to order a good scanner over the internet. By the way, I am still to decide if to continue to use the bleak Windows Live Mail, or jump to Outlook 2007. I would like to compare the screens of both, before taking the decision.

After work: Fiancé and me went to IKEA (Linköping) in our Toyota Yaris Verso - that fantastic car. Kudos to Mr. Toyoda - we think you should continue producing that semi-ugly "box car". We "rebuilt" the inside of the car and managed to carry ten 222 cm long side units for the Ivar shelf system on our back leg from Linköping, having changed them from the shorter 179 cm heights I had ordered by mistake. The hot dog (just 5 SEK!) outside the IKEA cashier tasted like heaven!

Clas Svahn phoned several times from the ongoing UFO-Sweden board meeting. It was decided by the UFO-Sweden board that AFU will rent yet another facility - the sixth in the Ljura residential area! - where UFO-Sweden can keep their huge store of back numbers of their magazines. The move from the present storage in Enköping will take place in June. Hope it doesn't involve too much work for us.

Late on Friday evening I had an email from Martin Schönherr in Innsbruck, who had finally packed his father's UFO research collection in 17 big moving boxes, ready for the lorry transport to Sweden. On the previous day (Thursday) I had a phone call from the regional office of Schenker's, who, with a big push from Martin, will give us a price for carrying the collection to AFU. Here is Martin's picture of the boxes:

Then back to AFU and trying to get to grips with 'the Microsoft problem' - how to be able to use Microsoft programs (Word, Excel and - above all - Access for our databases), at the archives, without paying a fortune with each new computer that we buy into the AFU system. Short 60 days trial periods only solve the problems temporarily. Finally, I decided I had to buy a complete Office Professional (which includes Access) license, with disks, to continue our work without learning everything from point zero, again. 'Free' systems like MySQL or Open Office provide no solution for us who have grown accustomed to the MS world, at our work places particularly. In the evening I ordered a copy of MS Office Professional which is now on it's way. I need at home & I need it at AFU.

Tuesday was another full day at AFU. Susanne and Benny helped the truck driver, his assistant and me with the unloading of the shelves and furniture from IKEA. Susanne and me put together one Verksam work-chair each. We are going to buy more of them! Elegant and nice to sit in. It is important that people who work for us have proper workplaces and a quality chair is the start! Håkan came in the evening and took some pictures for his blog, here, of a certain tired archives worker. He claims my eyes are shut but doesn't realize I am looking through the slits and can't allow much more light to hit my sensitive retina. Damned it, I don't like being photographed.

Hurrah, I have finally managed to change broadband provider. As usual it took 4-5 hours, several evenings, of terribly frustrating work with crazy codes and installation procedures run and re-run & heated phone calls. It seemed promising - at first - until I discovered the new provider had forgotten to include one of the two basic coding schemes for my new connection. Three rather heated calls to the service organization to try and clear up the matter. Bredbandsbolaget (or Telenor), the provider, has a lot to sharpen up on! As a measure of retrospective protest I include their name here without linking to them! Shame on them!

Tuesday, I concentrated on tidying up one of the shelves in the picture library room. A lot of old 'troubles' were sorted out and some trash (including a non-working printer) carried to the garbage room. Five-six meters of Danish reports were transferred to the emptied shelf space, now forming a 'united' Danish report archive, roughly sorted by year. More for Anci to set her beautiful teeth into! :-)

Benny was the new face in the crowd. He will start a digitizing project this week, working (at least in the beginning) from his home in Ljungsbro. Benny and me went to the D-archive to fetch a first batch of 23 audio interview cassettes. We then walked to the pizzeria for a nice lunch. Later, Tobias came by, 'after work', and the three of us did some planning of the project. Tobias had bought a USB cassette tape player and will help Benny (his brother in law) to get on foot with digitizing sound tracks. We also paid a visit to Ingrid in the library and inspected the old archives (now almost empty) that may become a future center for digitizing audio-visual materials and pictures. I but wonder where we are one year from now? Thrilling!!!

I had a look at the new 40 cm Billy book case that might fill out a few empty spaces in the book library. I found a folding chair (made from wood) that would be excellent to have for extra seats when we are many people round the breakfast table.

With some 'pushing' by Tobias I finally got to the project of starting up Benny on his job of digitizing audio cassettes. We have booked Monday as an introduction day for Benny, meeting the AFU staff, and with Tobias joining us in the afternoon. Almost daily I receive parcels of books & magazines bought on eBay for AFU. Checking up on eBay items is virtually the only project I have eye energy left for doing, in the evenings. One evening I spent, however, checking the IKEA web site, since fiancé & me are planning to go there tomorrow. I will reconnoiter for a 'big buy' from IKEA of shelves, furniture and office supplies to be sent to AFU by lorry - a project that seems finally feasible now when the big heaps of snow slowly melt away in front of our entrances. 

I have also completed our reply to a questionnaire sent by the National Archives, seeking information about digitizing projects among archive institutions. The Swedish government is formulating a national strategy for digitizing, electronic access and digital preservation and the National Archives collects info from the various local archives.

I had definite plans for what to do during the day but - as usual - I came away with completely other things done, not on my list! With united forces we refurnished the work area at the AFU center, to make better spaces for the ladies, Susanne (left) and Elisabeth (right).

In the afternoon I re-designed the Swedish clippings database somewhat by dividing it into two separate 'bases', one for dailies and another for weeklies and special publications. I also deleted hundreds of references that were . more or less - just question marks! Not useful data, so deleted. 

Well, the house was in fine shape and we had a nice coffee break with some leftover cookies from the bygone summer. After that I worked a few hours at the professional work - but on line from home.

In the evening me and fiancé went to Flygeln, the new concert hall in the industrial landscape where we and about one hundred other people listened to Ebba Forsberg & her five men orchestra, playing Leonard Cohen songs in Swedish translation. A very strong performance by everyone on the scene, but why so few in audience? Where were the other 500 who could also have enjoyed this show so immensely as we did?

Clas Svahn reports, with picture, on his UFO-Sweden blog here, that he has just fetched 13 kilos of Brazilian UFO magazines donated by A.G. Gevaerd, Brazil's most well known UFO activist. I remember we discussed this several years ago with Mr. Gevaerd. Clas finally finished the deal! Great addition to AFU's shelf of South American magazines.

Tobias Lindgren, manager of UFO-Sweden's report centre, came with his relatives (father, sister and brother-in-law) to discuss Phase 3-engagement for the brother-in-law with AFU. If the Public Employment Service in our neighboring town of Linköping will allow it, we would like Benny, the brother-in-law, to work for us on digitizing audio tape cassettes. It will possibly be a combination of work at home and coming to AFU for exchange of work materials and taking part of the 'social environment'. Another possibility is daily commuting Linköping - Norrköping and arranging a workplace for Benny at one of our facilities.

I also managed to recruit Tobias as a temporary, retrospective auditor for AFU for the passed five year period, when we have not had the time for many administrative procedures due to moving about with our collections from facility to facility. We do have another person in line for becoming our future auditor, but I have hesitated to put five years of book-keeping under that man's eyes. Tobias has now a permanent job with the digital maps department of the LFV (the Swedish Board of Civil Aviation) and is looking for a flat close both to his work & AFU here in Norrköping. He will be elected as a member of the AFU board at our next board meeting, the first in five years (except for daily contacts on the internet and by phone), which we will be able to hold when the auditing is finished.

At the archives, during the day, we also discussed a future change of work assignments. I will plan that and make it a reality after the upcoming professional work-period for about a fortnight (when there will be very little time for AFU). Going home, I brought two heavy report files for 1977 in my bag, to continue my report archiving project. In the process of carrying that heavy load on my bike I had to jump across the HUGE heaps of snow, bike in hand, and hurt my back. I now have symptoms similar to sciatica.

After work I took the bike to the grocery store to fetch another second-hand eBay book authored by forteanist William Corliss, plus a heavy (10 kilo) package of UFO books from France, credited today on Recent donations. I also put up two other credit notes to fine collections from the UK & Russia - see Recent donations (click on Recent donations 2009, there).  

But then again this allows for compensation hours and days later on at AFU. Anyway, two days lost into oblivion on feeding new parameters into a computer system that is ever so thirsty for details. Woke up Sunday morning with the obvious solution to a problem at work, I am impressed with how the brain can sort out things during sleep!!

Two evenings spent in front of the television, cutting out news articles on local buildings for my local historical collection on the community of Norrköping. You cannot put all your eggs in just one basket, can you? If there is one word that I like then its 'crop rotation' (växelbruk in Swedish). When tired, the easy work of managing your clipping collection relaxes and redirects your inner system.

Plodded the snow down to my work in town and did some further problem solving. The walk through the white snow got me an headache coming from my overexposed eye, so I had to leave work one hour before my original intentions for the day. Friday-Saturday-Sunday I will be completely engulfed by my professional work, the project will probably make a big hole in time for AFU.

In the morning, me & my fiancé went to the bank office to plan for the future and look after our future monetary situation. I signed for an endowment policy to help us keep our necks over the water after my planned pensioning 1,5 years from now. I am quite determined! 

An Irish researcher had booked for a visit at AFU tomorrow but emailed he had to postpone the trip from Stockholm until his next trip to Sweden in the spring. He's welcome anytime!

'Bikewalked' (my new word for the combination of biking (when possible) and walking) to the archives for a few hours of logistic work moving papers and stacks of papers here and there. Then home to start - for real - the process of becoming a pensioner. Wrote emails to six institutions/companies where I have saved-up money for my older days, trying to put questions on how to get my money back when I now need them, in a couple of years. I am very determined now to make it all work. Fiancé and me will go to the bank on Wednesday for more planning. 

A brief report on current on-going AFU work: There are now 44 Swedish UFO groups represented on the National Archival Database, thanks to our co-worker Susanne, who has spent this week on NAD, and will continue. Elisabeth has taken over Susanne's previous job of checking the report archives against our database, and Håkan L is completing the report files before Elisabeth's check-up. Anci continues to re-archive the Danish report archive from SUFOI while Ingrid has gotten to the letter "P" while cataloguing the Perry Petrakis book collection. Sven Olov is still filing American magazines from the huge Bill Caulfield collection and checking the material against our existing (previous) collections, while Sandra continues to enter Swedish clippings in our database. Christer works from Malmö on translating materials from the 1946 ghost rocket wave. At least two other people (Clas and Karl-Arne) are doing scanning work of pictures and news clippings from their respective homes. Håkan B has a busy time writing the updated version of UFO-Sweden's history (before the 40th anniversary this coming spring) and he has a lot of new organizational archives on his desk to take care of. Myself (Anders) I am trying to figure out how we should develop AFU with new shelves, new workplaces, computers and a scanner. So much that needs planning! If I counted correctly we are presently no less than 12 people working every week, and some of us every day, to develop AFU. Cveta and Malin have ended their short terms at AFU, and we are awaiting possible new work trainees.

Took the bike to the post office (grocery store) to bring home another 9 kilo parcel of archival materials from France - see Recent donations for 2010 - a new page I opened today. I also brought home two British ufo-related books I had never heard of before, bought for AFU on eBay. Despite the opened new 2010 page there are still a couple of donations from 2009 to credit, so check that up, too.

Walked (snows everyday, impossible to bike) to AFU after work, made some copies and then went over to inspect a possible new facility that we may hire to keep UFO-Sweden's stock of unsold magazines. UFO-Sweden has been ordered out of the club cottage and magazine store they now rent at Enköping. One alternative is to place the mag store in 'AFU custody'. Made measurements of the locality and will try some mathematics before I go to bed, to see if we can fit in 150 cartoons of magazines in a possible IKEA shelf system on 16 square meters without sending the UFO-Sweden guys on extreme slimming cures. Hmmm, I wonder...

Spent 1.5 hours walking to the post box at the petrol station in the southern outskirts of Norrköping. Not very efficient use of time, but what to do when more and more of this western society is built around his Majesty The Holy Car, and you don't want to be a part of that world? As I passed through the snow-covered biking lane close to a school I was (again) flabbergasted by the young lazy 'motorist' generation who cannot park a car 200 meters away to walk to the gym for an hour of training? Instead they trespass on the biking lane and destroy it by skidding up snow with their 4-wheel SUVs. Completely crazy! Just think if a gang of bicyclists would invade the motorway in protest???

Spent four afternoon hours at AFU sorting and carrying the remainder of yesterday's incoming 'goods' closer to where they will be archived, and cataloguing a batch of new magazines. AFU is more and more becoming a 'logistic' operation. Everything would be so much simpler if we had it all under one roof, instead of under four roofs.

Did a write-up to credit a few of the other collections that came with Clas & his gang of followers. See more under the entries of gifts from Mikael Westersund, Carl-Anton Mattsson and Erland Sandqvist on Recent donations. Also a note to credit a gift subscription for an interesting magazine - we should do more of such credits for other mags we receive for free like UFO Newsclipping Service and Fortean Times!

At AFU we welcome Elisabeth Booth (married to an Australian if you wonder about the un-Swedish surname) who started working for us today. My self-imposed quarantine (see below) forbids me from going to AFU HQ until perhaps Saturday morning when Clas and a gang of UFO-Sweden people will pass by for new archival deliveries.

A winter walk to the post office (in the grocery store) brought home a copy of Raechel's Eyes by Helen Littrell & Jean Bilodeaux. I have read some intriguing articles on the case in the MUFON UFO Journal (why don't we get that - despite repeated contacts with MUFON HQ? - is there an administration at that org?) so.. am a little curious. The previous owner from eBay seems to have tired at page 34-35. I doubt that my lone right eye will have the energy to read the whole book, despite my interest in abduction accounts. More interested in abductions than in 1950s contactee sagas, I must admit. Both are equally mysterious. In the 1950s it was mostly contactee men, in modern abductions it's mostly women. Why? 

This could have been a 'lost' day. I should have been at work, but my fiancé experienced - once again - the nasty winter vomiting decease. Feeling nauseated myself, in the morning, I was afraid I had caught it too, it's very contagious, but the day went by and I still feel like I am alive (- something you doubt very much when you are inside & experiencing the world of the WVD, that nasty little virus..).

More positively, AFU is now represented on the Swedish National Archives Database (NAD) with a first few of our several hundred archives from UFO groups, organizations and ufologists. (Just type the word 'UFO' in the search field and press "Sök"). In the coming months we will see to that ALL of our archives will be registered there! This is only just the archives indexes, of course! Like most archives we see no possibility (and cannot prioritize) digital scanning of all that we have, and receive - it would be a most bewildering task!

Anyway, today's investment was a small 2 kilo fire extinguisher for our work facility. I plan to buy another two or three extinguishers and also a number of fire blankets to keep for increased safety at our different facitilites.

Håkan spent the day in the AFU library putting more order into our huge collection of books, and creating more space for new titles. You can see new pictures and a report on his Swedish blog today.

Sweden experiences weeks of extreme cold (more than -40 Centigrade in north Sweden), and daily snowfalls, so I have had to postpone both a trip to our post box and checking up on what is happening at AFU. It just isn't possible to use the bike, you have to rely on walking or buses/trams.

From Clas Svahn's Swedish blog it is apparent that he is probably the most active AFU coworker these days. He has spent several full days scanning photographic material for the AFU/UFO-Sweden picture library.