My heart is full of pride to celebrate PF’s 72nd year anniversary this month despite an exceedingly difficult year of financial hardship for our organization with a gift to students, researchers and those interested in the work of the science of parapsychology. Concerned with preserving PF’s long lasting legacy of over 7 decades of publications I am proud to announce the formation and accessibility to our new Parapsychology Foundation Publications Library (PFPL) within our main website.
Within the PFPL you will find for free downloadable all the contents of our International Conference Proceeding series (papers and discussions), our Scholarly Monograph series and PF pamphlets in hopes that present and future generations will be able to partake of the expertise, labor and creativity of hundreds of researchers who have in depth tried to make sense, explain and utilize their findings concerning our complex field of research to better understand the psychic elements in our lives.
As President I had long considered how to make this resource more accessible and along with Anastasia Damalas, we envisioned a digital library to do just that. Anastasia has painstakingly had the task of creating this online library from scanning thousands of pages of materials to uploading and creating this web page. We considered putting this all behind a paywall to create much needed income and yet in the spirit of our remit to provide quality information to as many as those who seek it, that idea was rejected rendering the PFPL our gift to students the world over. Given our dwindling remaining funds we hope those who appreciate and utilize the resource will consider donating so this page can remain for years to come.
I leave it to Anna to share some user guidelines as those who know me know technology is not my forte:
Working for the PF for nine plus years, many things have changed but one constant in my job here has been corresponding with researchers and scanning/sending them relevant materials. I can’t tell you how often we have poured through the table of contents of different proceedings trying to find an article from a specific author to scan and send off. I am beyond excited to bring all of that material to everyone’s fingertips.
Not being a web developer in any way, I did my best to organize the files and have the website be moderately user friendly. There is a search bar that will pull exact matches from the file names. Each file name has the publication title, year, author and name of article in it. If you misspell a word it will not likely find a result and if you type out a word like “dreams” it will not return search results with the titles containing “dream” singular, so be careful to type in words in their shortest form when trying to use the search function. Also, authors often used initials instead of first names, so I suggest searching for just a last name when trying to find works by a specific person. Having scanned and labeled and then uploaded and named so many files onto this site, there is likely to be human error. I would greatly appreciate anyone who has an issue with a mislabeled or potentially faulty file, email to notify us of the issue at Office@parapsychology.org. Happy reading!
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Well there you have it. It is our intent to carry on as best we can with few remaining financial resources to continue the work of Eileen J. Garrett and so many others who have toiled within the PF ranks in the passing years. As noted researcher and one time beloved staff member Dr. Carlos S. Alvarado once wrote “Garrett’s major contribution was not in her psychic gifts (and the contribution they made to the field was by no means trivial), but in her work to support and organize parapsychology.” The PFPL stands as proof of that statement. Anastasia and I have hoped to do our part in support of Parapsychology. We wish you and yours a happy and healthy New Year and with the help of PFPL may we all continue onward and upward.