[ANSTHRLD] August Gazette

[Alasdair MacEogan]

Alden Drake <alden_drake at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>  Continued publication of the Ansteorran Gazette was brought up at the
>  Plenary Meeting at the last Round Table.  It is currently open for
>  discussion.  People are welcome to express their views here, or email
>  them to star at ansteorra.org.

OK, here ya go. ;-)
  
>  Currently, my thinking is that the only thing not necessarily duplicated
>  in the AG is the letter from Star.  This is particularly important
>  however, because it is official communication from Star's office and as
>  such, is required to be filed by heraldic officers, per the
>  Administrative Handbook's officers' job description.  That means every
>  heraldic officer should be filing a copy of it, or the AG in it's
>  entirety, each month.

You forgot Fast-Track information also. ;-).  Hmm, this potentially a whole other discussion, but you probably know as well as I what happens to files and records over the years.  Especially at a local herald level.  Files go missing, get destroyed, etc.  Heck this is not even restricted to local heralds.  I seem to recall a story about a certain former laurel bonfire...

>  Also, I am in favor of keeping the AG (even if it's just emailed or
>  downloaded from the website) because it is a one-stop source for all the
>  information that would otherwise have to be gotten in pieces.  It is
>  particularly useful for local branch heralds, as it provides one
>  document in which they can track the progress of all the submissions
>  sent up from their branch with relative ease, and note if there are any
>  problems with the submissions at any point along the way.  This can
>  potentially help speed up fixes.

Actually I think that the separate pieces may be more helpful in this.  Especially with an up to date Heraldic Submissions tracker.  The reason I think this is simply because, especially for new local heralds, the AG can be temporally confusing.  Lets pick a gazette at random (Feb 2007).  It has the Jan 2007 ILoI, the Nov 2006 ICC, the October 2006 AICC, LoAR results from I'm not sure when.  Now if you are a new herald I can see this as being confusing.  The july 2007 Gazette has the July 2007 ILoI, April 2007 AICC, the March 2007 LoAR.    Now the different pieces are a lot more straightforward to my mind.  You know what is where and do not run through a couple different Gazettes to find a specific piece of info.

>  If people are only interested in various components of the AG, they are
>  free to have them emailed, or download them, individually still.  These
>  items usually go live online a little bit before the AG is published, so
>  they can be obtained a little faster that way.

Not always.  The ILoI is supposed to be held till the Gazette comes out and I think I lost the AICC for May somewhere and I have had to re-request it from Emma.  At the moment the Gazette is considered the official source for some of these pieces.  If there is a discrepancy for some reason the Gazette is the record.  Is that going to change?

Just trying to add points to consider

Inquiringly,
Alasdair