The early American UFO buffs of the late '40s thought to have collected an outstanding amount of documentation when having a bunch of newsclippings in their own hands. They could have hardly imagined the huge quantity of material about their beloved topic available from all over the world after nearly fifty years.
"Available" is not a correct word, as no present single researcher or private association has enough money and facilities to get and store a complete or really compehensive selection of international books, magazines, newsclippings, reports and whatever else published about the UFO argument. Even worse, the documentation managed by each single buff is so bulky that it is really difficult and costly to arrange an exchange of material with somebody else. Information transfer by using traditional media such as printed paper has become a problem since a lot of time: the situation will become more and more difficult in the near future, producing a huge bottleneck in the development of new well-documented research works.
A commonplace example: let's think to an American researcher having a catalogue of close encounter cases and willing to supply it to an European colleague under the form of a collection of text documents and images. First of all, a lot of time and money are necessary to copy all that stuff in a not too good quality, then more time and money is requested to prepare a parcel and mail it. The material will arrive at destination after some time, yet when it will be in the hands of the researcher there are other problems. The way to manage all that amount of information will be quite limited and always very time-consuming: actually, all operations aimed at extracting only some information on the ground of search requests or alternative use of the available documents will be limited by the paper nature of information. Such a situation is one of the causes of the low number of real well- documented research works carried out within the UFO movement.
PHOTOCAT AND THE QUESTION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC
... may refers to the awareness of having an incredible evidence in our hands, the UFO information, which is so huge we cannot manage it efficiently. This means that is not fully accessible to the scientific establishment and UFO researchers as well, reducing its outstanding value. Such an information is the real unquestionable evidence of the presence of something reported by millions of people around the world. We must not miss it.
Computer technologies may help us dramatically in making information easily and quickly available to everybody seriously interested in coping with the UFO question. Switching from a paper-based archive to an electronic one is not easy and fast for people like ufologists sharing limited resources. Anyway, the work has been already started and the future will show us the results of such a revolution. Maybe a dusty file is much more fascinating than a cold piece of hardware filled in with chips and wires: probably that's true, but progress goes on quickly and all of us need new more efficient tools to deal with UFO information and related research. Ten years ago, most of the things reported in this paper looked still somewhere in a distant future. now they aren't. In ten years expect even more.
Maurizio Verga, May 1995
Delair J.B., Cox E. & Twine R. (1975-1978) "A provisional catalogue of UFO photographs" UFO REGISTER Vol. 6, n 2 + Vol. 7 n 2 +Vol. 8 n 2
Stevens W. & Roberts A. (1985-86) "UFO Photographs around the World" Vol. 1 & Vol. 2, UFO Photo Archives
Fusco S. & De Turris S. (1975) "Obbiettivo sugli UFO - Fotostoria dei dischi volanti", Edizioni Mediterranee, Italy
International groups or researchers interested in knowing more about PHOTOCAT and exchanging photographs or videos may write to this author: Maurizio Verga, via Matteotti 85, 22072 Cermenate (Co), ITALY. Phone:+39-31-771600. Please state, if available, a fax number.
A metal-made looking object was seen to fly slowly over some buldings just in front of the witness' house (the mother of him stated to have seen the object before the son). The young man took two pictures, eight seconds one from the other, by an old Russian camera he had on a table. Then the object took off vertically at high speed.
This author is available to anybody interested in such a project for consulting or delivering of suitable information/material.