Watchtower Library on DVD

[TRUTH04]

6 hours ago, jwhess said:

It would depend on your personal view of sharing scanned images of publications.  But the total accumulated size of the project is massive.  It amounts to 60-70 Gigabytes of material.  Way to much to send by electronic means.  you could load a portable hard drive and transport it (that is how I moved to to my new computer.

 

This is a collection that I started in the late 1980's and have upgraded and added to since then.

 

If you just need a copy of the 1891 Watchtowers, that could be done.

What will be the size of 1891?

[jwhess]

On 3/1/2021 at 12:19 PM, TRUTH04 said:

What will be the size of 1891?

The size of individual years of the Watchtower magazines varies by year due to the printing methods.  Original black & white print with no pictures starts out at about 10 kilobytes in size for a year.  Later there were pictures and diagrams.  Later there was 4-color printing and finally full-color.  Toward the later magazines, a years production is about 300 kilobytes in size per year.

[Floyd]

I feel like everything we really need has been printed in the last 30 years or so. I never use the old index. With the old stuff you have to realize that it may not be accurate. 

[Life4u]

Hi 👋!,

I'm in need of help.  My WT Cd will not update for me. 

[Life4u]

17 minutes ago, Life4u said:

Hi 👋!,

I'm in need of help.  My WT Cd will not update for me. 

Nevermind, me thinks me got it!

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by Life4u
Update

[jwhess]

2 hours ago, Floyd said:

I feel like everything we really need has been printed in the last 30 years or so. I never use the old index. With the old stuff you have to realize that it may not be accurate. 

No one should use older material for current proofs or reasonings.  It is vital that we continue to be aware of our heritage and beginnings.  We need to compare early thoughts and see the direction the Holy Spirit has given us to make the needed changes to keep up with "increasing light".  Deep research is not always about current topics.

 

Psalm 48:13 reminds us to speak about theses original things "to all the generations" to come.

 

Our organization even has an "Archive" department.  One of the GB members is quoted as saying....

 

*** w12 1/15 pp. 31-32 Preserving Gems From Our Past ***

The Governing Body is keenly interested in our theocratic history. In commenting on the need to preserve, document, and pass on our spiritual heritage, one member of the Governing Body said, “To know where we are going, we have to know where we have come from.” To that end, Writing Archives was recently set up at world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and is under the direction of the Writing Committee.

 

[Floyd]

At the same time they have also left it up to the bodies of elders to decide if a physical library is needed in the Kingdom Hall. So I trust the governing body to preserve our spiritual heritage. I don't feel the need to do so as well. I have accepted that individuals will probably lose everything in the end anyway.

[jwhess]

7 hours ago, Floyd said:

At the same time they have also left it up to the bodies of elders to decide if a physical library is needed in the Kingdom Hall. So I trust the governing body to preserve our spiritual heritage. I don't feel the need to do so as well. I have accepted that individuals will probably lose everything in the end anyway.

The only decision that is supposed to be made about the library is the TYPE of library.  All Kingdom Halls are to have as complete a library as possible, but will it be one of printed material or will it be presented as a useful (and accessible) electronic one.  You can of course have both.

 

No body of elders is supposed to eliminate the library or access to it.

 

Side note: if a hall has decided to eliminate the printed material, they are not supposed to do so without informing the Branch and the Branch will determine if any of the publications need to be sent to the headquarters for archiving.

[Floyd]

Yes that is what I said. By physical I mean books and magazines. Library many times refers to the collection not the room itself.

[jwhess]

5 minutes ago, Floyd said:

Yes that is what I said. By physical I mean books and magazines. Library many times refers to the collection not the room itself.

I am sorry that I misunderstood you.  We had been discussing the electronic library (the WTL and my personal electronic one).  So when you were saying it was not needed older than 30 years, I thought you were talking about the electronic  (digital) library not the physical one.  Our organization provides us digital publication back 50-70 years and my personal digital goes back to the beginning. My apologies.

 

Our videos (Out of Darkness, etc), the Proclaimer's book, the Kingdom Rules book and our "Belief's Clarified" references show the importance of our connections to the past efforts of God's servants.  Even our Bible gives us 3500 years of written (now digital) reference material.

[carlos]

On 3/4/2021 at 2:32 AM, Floyd said:

I feel like everything we really need has been printed in the last 30 years or so. I never use the old index. With the old stuff you have to realize that it may not be accurate. 

This is true. It's important to rely on recent information, and most of what we need has been mentioned in the last decades.

 

On the other hand, there are some subjects, and especially some scriptures, that haven't been discussed in recent decades, and yet there are beautiful points about them in older publications from the 70s or 80s. We see this often when researching for the Gems part of the meeting. Some scriptures or passages were explained in the 70s and have never been mentioned again.

 

If we speak of even older publications, such as those from the 30s mentioned here, or even older, those are only useful for historical research. I would not think of using them for spiritual research, since our understanding of the Scriptures has improved immensely and our way of approach them too.

[TRUTH04]

On 3/4/2021 at 1:54 AM, jwhess said:

The size of individual years of the Watchtower magazines varies by year due to the printing methods.  Original black & white print with no pictures starts out at about 10 kilobytes in size for a year.  Later there were pictures and diagrams.  Later there was 4-color printing and finally full-color.  Toward the later magazines, a years production is about 300 kilobytes in size per year.

That size per year is affordable. I would appreciate an inbox of it.

[Floyd]

23 hours ago, jwhess said:

my personal digital goes back to the beginning.

Wow you are old. Did you know Moses? 😁

[jwhess]

23 minutes ago, Floyd said:

Wow you are old. Did you know Moses? 😁

I'm on a first-name basis with Jesus...does that count?.....🙂

[jwhess]

My Watchtower Library (WTL) just updated.  It is now update 2101

[Qapla]

[trottigy]

Interesting - it has the new "Enjoy Life Forever!" brochure, but not the book - yet

[WilliamChew]

Jonathan/On the Huh mentioned in this post:

 WT Library received an update a few months ago that added new features to download or stream videos, so that videos (like the study bible videos etc)  are no longer included in the monthly updates, thus reducing their size. 

 

I didn't notice/encounter this new feature. Would appreciate if someone could point to a topic in WT Lib where this new feature can be observed?

 

 

[Tortuga]

24 minutes ago, WilliamChew said:

Would appreciate if someone could point to a topic in WT Lib where this new feature can be observed?

I was wondering the same thing.

[jayrtom]

On 2/27/2021 at 8:37 PM, jwhess said:

I use mine every day.  The indexes are awesome.  References back to 1935...♥️

 

On 2/27/2021 at 8:41 PM, Old said:

Same here, often many time in a day. I find it frustrating to look for specific information using WOL.

 

On 3/4/2021 at 4:12 AM, jwhess said:

No one should use older material for current proofs or reasonings.  It is vital that we continue to be aware of our heritage and beginnings.  We need to compare early thoughts and see the direction the Holy Spirit has given us to make the needed changes to keep up with "increasing light".  Deep research is not always about current topics.

 

Psalm 48:13 reminds us to speak about theses original things "to all the generations" to come.

 

Our organization even has an "Archive" department.  One of the GB members is quoted as saying....

 

*** w12 1/15 pp. 31-32 Preserving Gems From Our Past ***

The Governing Body is keenly interested in our theocratic history. In commenting on the need to preserve, document, and pass on our spiritual heritage, one member of the Governing Body said, “To know where we are going, we have to know where we have come from.” To that end, Writing Archives was recently set up at world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and is under the direction of the Writing Committee.

 

It is great the library you have and if I lived near you I would beg you to share that awsome information you have - Your house should be included in the list of museums of the world headquarters

 

 

However in regards to the WTL I rarely use it nowadays. I found 90% of the information I need from the wol and don't feel the need to search more in other tools. I use google search so I find everything I need, except rare cases for specific matters (but those I don't find in the wtl either)

So wol is my daily driver for spiritual information (it goes back to the 30's too, btw)

 

I wonder when will wtl be phased out as indicated some years ago (already?)

 

[On the huh]

19 hours ago, WilliamChew said:

Jonathan/On the Huh mentioned in this post:

 WT Library received an update a few months ago that added new features to download or stream videos, so that videos (like the study bible videos etc)  are no longer included in the monthly updates, thus reducing their size. 

 

I didn't notice/encounter this new feature. Would appreciate if someone could point to a topic in WT Lib where this new feature can be observed?

 

 

If you check the update packages now, they do not include any videos.  I think the main download of Watchtower Library 2017 still has what was originally included, which was a few of the study bible videos.  If you have the videos already from previous downloads then you won't notice, but if you were to start with a fresh, you will notice a difference as the videos won't be there.

 

Also, it seems the videos will download into the same folder as JW Library uses.  The default folder is Videos\JWLibrary.  So if you have used JW Library to download videos, then WT Library will also use them, saving space on your hard drive.

 

A good way to try the new feature would be with the new Enjoy Life Brochure.  Click on the link for the video.  If you haven't got the video already, it will start streaming.  In the toolbar you will see a button to download the video.  If the video has been downloaded, a button to open the folder will be in the toolbar.  Also you can choose the resolution of the videos.

 

This new feature has greatly reduced the size of the monthly updates. 

 

 

 

 

[jwhess]

When I open the Enjoy Life Forever brochure, I can see the video listed...the picture at the end of the line is the identifying "thumbnail" and the little square at the upper left of the picture corner plays the video, My videos are already downloaded so it plays them directly in the Watchtower Library (DVD) program.

[jwhess]

The WTL just updated again.  We are at update 2102 now.

 

 

[On the huh]

Big update this time 800+MB

Includes new book.  That is a big file.  All that extra media info.

Plus updates the files to many older WTs and KMs and a few other publications for some reason.

[Qapla]

Update went fine - d/l and install took less than 3 minutes