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1. Welcome to the MVFD Syllabus Collection. 2. Who are the Miami Valley Folk Dancers (MVFD)? 3. System requirements to use the Collection. 5. How to use the Collection – accessing and searching. 8. How did the MVFD Syllabus Collection come into being? 9. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Troubleshooting. |
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Important Note:
Please do not make copies of this CD for your friends, relatives, and
enemies. Please do not post
individual files or individual pages from this collection on the web. The price of this CD does not even begin
to cover the cost of producing the collection. Many people have volunteered a whole lot of their time and
effort to put this collection together.
They would like their club, MVFD, to benefit from any income from the
sale of this CD. You are welcome to
print pages or whole syllabi for your personal use. You are even welcome to distribute hard copies of individual
pages if you want to teach a particular dance and provide instructions. Please make sure that the MVFD Syllabus
Collection legend appears on any hard copies. Thank you for your consideration. |
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MVFD Syllabus Collection |
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[go to Introduction to Collection] |
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1. Welcome to the MVFD Syllabus Collection. |
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The purpose of the MVFD Syllabus Collection is to preserve the legacy of the Miami Valley Folk Dancers (MVFD). We have gathered syllabi from every known workshop of MVFD since its inception in late 1952. There are over 70 syllabi. The collection reproduces each syllabus as close to the original as possible in a digital format. The result is a single CD with one file for each syllabus, including the cover artwork, dance instructions, and miscellaneous information. The Collection, while retaining the look and feel of the original paper document, includes a master index for the entire collection, a table of contents for each individual syllabus, and enables text searches across all of the syllabi at once, or within an individual syllabus. Please note that throughout the collection, spelling
errors, typographical errors, and other minor problems were corrected. For those of you who are serious
researchers or don’t believe what you see, the original scanned images of the
pages are included in the collection.
These may be accessed through the “image” links in each of the
indices. |
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2. Who are the Miami Valley Folk Dancers (MVFD)? |
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The Miami Valley Folk Dancers is a recreational, international folk dance club in Dayton, Ohio, USA. The Miami Valley Folk Dancers started as a class in 1952 sponsored by the City of Dayton, Recreation Department. The class was so successful that a new club was formed. Over the years the Miami Valley Folk Dancers has been dedicated to learning new dances, increasing members appreciation for many diverse cultures. In its history the club has sponsored dozens of workshops with nationally and internationally known instructors. With each workshop we immersed ourselves into the culture of other countries with dance, song, costumes, food, and fellowship. This collection represents and preserves much that the club has learned since its inception. If you would like to know more about the Miami Valley Folk Dancers, we invite you to visit our website at www.daytonfolkdance.com/mvfd. |
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3. System requirements to use the Collection. |
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The collection has been designed to be used entirely from CD. The PC minimum system tested was an AMD K6-3, 333MHz, 256MB memory. Many other systems should work. |
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4. About PDF files. |
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Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents. PDF is a universal file format that preserves the fonts, images, graphics, and layout of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. Adobe® PDF files are compact and complete, and can be shared, viewed, and printed by anyone with free Adobe Reader® software. If you want more information about Adobe products, please visit their web site at www.adobe.com. |
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5. How to use the Collection – accessing and searching. |
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There are several ways to access the syllabi in the collection. a. Browse
the collection by using the Syllabi by Year,
Syllabi by Emphasis, b. Search individual files by using the Find command or button. Please access the Acrobat Reader Help guide to learn how to use the Find command. c. Search across all files by using the Search command or button. Please access the Acrobat Reader Help guide to learn how to use the Search command. d. To return to this introduction, click on Introduction to Collection, found in each list and the beginning of each syllabus. |
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6. Words about Copyright. |
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As a collection, the MVFD Syllabus Collection is copyrighted by the Miami Valley Folk Dancers, Dayton, Ohio. Each syllabus, as a published collection, is copyrighted by the Miami Valley Folk Dancers, Dayton, Ohio. The copyright of each dance instruction is retained by the author of the instruction. |
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7. Credits. |
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A special thanks to those people who contributed copies of syllabi to MVFD so that they could eventually be preserved in this collection. We are especially thankful to those people who were part of the club in the early years and provided us with their personal copies of early syllabi. ˘ Alta Balduf ˘ Ann & Sam Ballinger Extra special thanks go to the people who volunteered their labor to make this collection a possibility. It could not have been done without them. ˘ Leslie Hyll, Project Chair ˘ Edmund Cordray |
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8. How did the MVFD Syllabus Collection come into being? |
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“The Syllabus Project” was instigated by MVFD member Leslie Hyll. She had the selfish idea that she wanted the club’s dance instructions on her computer so she could easily search for dances she was to teach. With a degree in Computer Science, Leslie had the knowledge of the software and techniques needed to accomplish this task. It didn’t take long to realize that this was also a way to preserve an important asset of the Miami Valley Folk Dancers – syllabi from every workshop sponsored by the club. These syllabi not only form the basis of the club’s dance repertoire, they reflect the nature and evolution of international folk dancing in Dayton, Ohio. They contain historical information about the club, its members, and visiting dance instructors, and cultural information about ethnic groups and countries. Work on this project began in 2000 and was completed in 2004. All the work was performed by volunteers. Twenty volunteers contributed countless hours of labor. |
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8.1. The Conversion Process. |
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A picture of each page was taken by the computer (scanned image). The image was deciphered into text which then had to be formatted to look like the original page. Once all the pages of a syllabus had been formatted, it was printed and given to a volunteer to be proofread against the original. Errors were corrected and the syllabus was proofread again to assure an accurate reproduction. The digital image of each cover was cleaned. Finally, all the pieces were brought together into one file and encoded to the final digital format. (Translation for computer geeks – we scan ‘em, OCR ‘em, format ‘em in Word, proofread ‘em, edit the redlines, clean up the cover .tif file, convert everything to PDF, generate the index, put in cross document links, and spit out a finished PDF file.) |
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8.2. Technology Used in the Conversion Process. |
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Scanning – Scanning was performed using whatever scanner and software was owned by the volunteers who performed scanning. Output formats included “.tif”, “.jpg”, “.bmp”, and “.wmf”. Most pages were scanned in black and white, at a resolution of 150 to 300 dots per inch (dpi). The covers were scanned at a much higher resolution and touched up to remove stray marks, names, and dirt. Photoshop was used to edit the cover images. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) – ScanSoft OmniPage Pro Versions 10, 11, 12, and 14 were used to perform the optical character recognition (OCR) of the syllabus page images. What is OCR? Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of extracting text from an image of a page. This page image is an electronic picture of text and maybe other elements such as headings and pictures. These images do not have editable text characters; they have many tiny dots that together form a picture of text. The OCR process examines the text image and creates computer-editable text from it, so the text does not have to be manually retyped. Formatting and Editing – Microsoft Word 2000 was used to format and edit each syllabus file. Conversion to PDF – Adobe Acrobat 5.0 was used to convert the Word files to PDF files. |
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9. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Troubleshooting. |
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9.1. Why can’t I search across syllabi? |
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The “index” is probably not attached. To attach the index, select Edit > Search > Select Indexes > Add. Now on the MVFD Syllabus Collection disk, select the subdirectory “syllabi”, then select the “index.pdx” file. Click on Open. Click on OK. The index should now be attached and you should be able to search across syllabi. |
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9.2. How can I convert PDF to a Word document or plain text? |
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The answer is that you can’t. The purpose of presenting the syllabi in PDF is to provide you with a viewable, searchable, and printable copy of each syllabus for your personal use. There is no intent that you should be able to convert the files into an editable format, such as Word. |
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9.3. How can I copy text from a PDF file to my word processor? |
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The answer is that you can’t. The files have been encrypted such that you cannot electronically copy the text. |
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9.4. Can I use the CD on a MAC? |
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This CD was created for use on a PC. Very limited testing has been done with a MAC. The machine we used would read the CD. However, it does not autostart Acrobat Reader when the CD is inserted. If you have Acrobat Reader version 5 or later on your MAC, you should be able to open any of the files on the CD. However, none of the links between files work. That means that if you want to look up a dance in the master list of dances, you’ll then have to go find the file that the dance resides in and open it yourself. If you are determined to use this CD on a MAC, check our website for updates (www.daytonfolkdance.com/mvfd/syllabi) to see if we have learned how to make it all work on a MAC. |
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9.5. I can’t make the CD work, this link doesn’t work, the spelling of this word is wrong, I just want to whine at you. |
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FIRST – PLEASE – check our website (www.daytonfolkdance.com/mvfd/syllabi) for further guidance. As problems come up, we’ll try to post solutions, work-a-rounds, and known errors, issues, and idiosyncrasies. (It’s not an error, it’s a feature!) Remember, this was a labor of love, and we are not perfect. Please check the website before you contact us. If you have checked the website and you still have issues, you may report your issue by sending an email to mvfd@daytonfolkdance.com. Someone will try to get back to you promptly, BUT, if you manage to send it at the beginning of our vacation, it could easily be up to 3 weeks before you will get a reply. Please be patient. |