Pathfinder Press is a publishing house whose titles contain the main lessons of the modern working-class movement. The authors include the founding members of the communist movement, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, to communist leaders today such as Fidel Castro.

About a year ago Pathfinder converted its publishing methods from outmoded, labor-intensive, and costly film and camera techniques to state-of-the-art computer-to-plate technology. The latter is cheaper, and less labor intensive. Although shop personnel must learn new skills with the new technique, it cuts training and overall labor time dramatically. However, at the time of the changeover, only a handful of Pathfinder's 350 titles could be reprinted using the new technology. The majority of the books still exist as paper or film.

The Reprint Project was born out of the desire of supporters of the communist movement to as rapidly as possible covert all paper books to digital form. There are more than 100 volunteers in eight countries involved today.

Currently 25 percent of all titles are on compact discs and can be reprinted in a matter of hours. The steering committee, composed of four volunteers in San Francisco who organize the volunteers, believes it can increase this amount to 33 percent by July 1 and to more than 50 percent by Jan. 1, 2001. To do so the volunteers will have to achieve an average rate of production of eight books per month from January through June, and then increase the average to 10 a month in the last half of the year. The project averaged five books a month for November through January, peaking at nine in December.

The project successfully achieved a major milestone when it finished converting the text of all books and pamphlets into digital form at the end of 1999. This is the first step in creating an electronic copy of a book. Since this initial step is not a perfect process, as often typographical errors are introduced into the text, each book must be proofread--twice--for the quality we want to achieve. The team of 12 volunteers involved in this conversion have now moved on to other tasks, such as formatting, graphics, and creating new indexes.

In January the project delivered five compact discs to Pathfinder: Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Frederick Engels; Fight against Fascism in the U.S.A; Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution by Leon Trotsky; Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro; and February 1965: The Final Speeches by Malcolm X.

The project is aiming to complete between six and nine more titles in February. Ten new people asked to join the effort in January and they will be put to work in February. Three weeks into February, 15 new people signed up. More are expected.

Tom Tomasko is a member of the Reprint Project steering committee.  
 
 
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