The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.10           March 16, 1998 
 
 
Pathfinder Digitization Project Is Off And Running -- Print shop prepares for computer-to-plate machinery  

BY BRIAN TAYLOR
NEW YORK - The project to put all of Pathfinder's books and pamphlets into digital form so that they may be reprinted more quickly and with less labor is off and running. The steering committee of volunteers for the Pathfinder Digitization Project met in San Francisco on February 28 to take stock of where the project stands in its beginning stages.

There are now volunteers in 12 cities in the United States scanning and proofreading 18 books. These cities include Chicago, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Boston, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Some of the books being worked on include Speeches for Socialism by James P. Cannon, The Spanish Revolution and The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, both by Leon Trotsky and Understanding History and Democracy and Revolution, both by George Novack. Most of these books will soon be out of print. To save costly reprinting expenses, Pathfinder supporters are putting these books in attractive formats and digital form to take advantage of new printing processes.

Volunteers in most of these cities have requested additional books to start working on. Supporters in Minneapolis; Miami; Tucson, Arizona; Greensboro; New Zealand; and the United Kingdom have also requested books and will be receiving them shortly.

In San Francisco, volunteer Jerry Gardner has begun formatting the first book of this project, The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky. Based on his experience formatting this book, he will teach others in the San Francisco Bay Area. In turn, they will teach Pathfinder supporters worldwide who are involved in the project.

Easy-to-use-templates
Toni Gorton, a member of the United Auto Workers who lives in Detroit, traveled to the Pathfinder building in New York February 27 to help out on the project. A longtime supporter of Pathfinder and a skilled graphic artist who has designed many Pathfinder books and covers over the past decade, Gorton spent three days here working with the Pathfinder staff on the design for several basic templates that will be used to format Pathfinder books and pamphlets. Having these templates will make it possible to maintain Pathfinder's high standards on reprints. The formatting of each book will go from being a task that requires experienced and skilled designers, to a detailed, but relatively unskilled technical task.

Drawing from the work that had already begun in Pathfinder's print shop to standardize the style of books, Gorton came up with new design features based on several recently published Pathfinder titles. These new template designs combine an attractive and readable appearance with the maximum flexibility of use, eliminating time consuming and unnecessary steps that make a formatter's job more complicated.

To make Pathfinder titles easier to read, Gorton helped come up with basic fonts, or styles of type, that are most appropriate for today's printing technology.

The work of volunteers around the world is an important part of the efforts being made in the print shop to reorganize the production process, including through the acquisition of new machinery to significantly reduce labor time.

The main purpose for getting the new machinery, as with all decisions regarding the print shop, is to better meet the needs of Pathfinder Press, which has as its central goal the publishing and distribution of books and pamphlets that are irreplaceable in the political and cultural development of the working-class.

New booklet hot off presses
The newest title off the presses is Pathfinder Press was born with the October Revolution: A publishing house for working-class fighters that lets revolutionary leaders speak in their own words, a reprint of articles from the Militant, as well as a 1991 report, "Strengthening the propaganda production and political leverage of the communist movement" by Socialist Workers Party leader Mary-Alice Waters. The booklet, now available from Pathfinder for $8, explains the past, present, and future of the print shop in a period of the ongoing decline of capitalism worldwide, as workers around the world - from the Caterpillar workers in the United States to toilers in Germany - are drawing lines in the sand, refusing to be pushed back any further. It is the third booklet produced in the last two months.

Clearing the way to work productively
Members of the print shop staff have visited several print shops on the East Coast to view the latest computer-to-plate (CTP) technology to learn how to implement it at Pathfinder's print shop.

"At the same time, we can't just bring in the CTP machines," explained Juliette Montauk, the business manager for the print shop that produces Pathfinder books. "The CTP hardware will give us the potential to produce a lot of plates. But if we are not prepared to increase productivity on the presses and in the bindery, we will not be able to make full use of this advanced technology. So we are taking measures to improve our methods of organizing production and training new staff."

The print shop is minimizing all work that calls for labor intensive typesetting and stripping.

The bindery staff is upgrading the level of cleanliness in the factory and strengthening the habits of regular maintenance and improvement of machinery. After every morning production meeting, the staff organizes a cleanup of the bindery and the outside lot and sidewalk.

Chris Hoeppner, who organizes Pathfinder's print shop, made the point that "production rates are a tool that if accurately kept provide the objective criteria necessary to gauge how well the work is being done, and the areas of work where more training is needed to qualify on the machines."

Paul Pederson, one of the shop's newest staff members explained the role of machine crews at a recent bindery department meeting. "These crews are the basic unit of production, designed to keep accurate production rates, train and qualify new staff on the machines," and to take charge of machine maintenance. "They must meet at least once a week to discuss their progress and make decisions on production. If a problem arises, the crew may need to meet an additional time to generalize the experience among all the operators," Pederson said.

"At our next crew meeting, we will discuss production rates on each machine," added binder operator Peter Thierjung. "Each job we do needs an operator's name attached, their individual rates, and notes of problems we faced running the job. Doing this will make it possible to gauge our productivity and measure the training of new people." Thierjung also raised the need to give inexperienced workers "hands-on training with time to actually work" on the machines and be challenged to produce at rate.

José Aravena, who organizes the bindery, said, "How do we make a smoother operation? Are there steps we can streamline or improve? The entire bindery has to play a role in asking and answering these questions."

Workers in the bindery discussed making a checklist of tasks in which every new person needs to be competent. The checklist, along with attention to keeping production and scrap rates, can speed up training times and make it easier to pinpoint skills that require more practice.

This week the Militant focused on steps that have been taken in the shop's bindery. In coming weeks the paper will cover steps being taken in other print shop departments to improve productivity and prepare the way for the advanced computer-to-plate equipment that will significantly reduce the amount of time and labor needed to produce Pathfinder books.

Tom Tomasko from San Francisco and Mike Taber contributed to this article.  
 
 
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