[vsnet-chat 3769] Archival data status?

[Brian Skiff <bas@lowell.edu>]

     What is the status of archival visual and photographic observations for
variable stars from the published literature?  I recently dug out about 200
observations of the red semiregular AI Aur, which is all but absent from the
major databases.  The visual series for this star by Beyer in the 1930s was
used to produce the ephemeris given in the current GCVS (the period is correct
by the way).  A rough estimate suggests the amount of data "hidden" in the
journals must be comparable to the combined AAVSO/AFOEV/VSOLJ/etc databases.
But so far as I know very little (or none) of this is incorporated.  Because
it provides indispensable temporal coverage, it would seem to me that an effort
should be made to get this stuff into machine-readable form in some agreed-upon
format.  Since many of the stars involved are relatively bright, getting the
comparison sequences onto a common standard system is much easier now than in
the past.

\Brian

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