Welcome New Member ryhorikawa & SHQ NEWS

Welcome to all new members of this mailing list and user ryhorikawa
who is associated with the UW.

I lived in Madison WI for a few years and in fact a bulk of the research
for SHINSENGUMIHQ (SHQ ) was completed at the UW's Memorial
Library and the Wisconsin State Historical Society. There are
many "little" treasures and artifacts right in Memorial Union from the
Meiji Era and some Wisconsinites had interesting connections to 19th
century Japan.

You may all have already asked yourselves..."well WHAT happened to
SHQ.com?"

Earlier this year, the SHQ hosting company must have experienced a
technical glitch which erased an html file which is basically where all
pages of the website are stored (a database pulls info from this html
file). The html file was deleted and it's not clear what happened.
FOrtunately Barbara Sheridan had a back up file of everything and from
this file an e-book will be written.

The e-book will be designed to be user friendly for people new to this
slice of history and yet written and cited in such a way to make it a
helpful research resource. The e-book will be in a pdf format for easy
download and should any new additional information be added, it will be
mentioned on an update page.

From examining the SHQ server, it was obvious to me that new visitors
tended to dwell on popular pages and never visited the really really
detailed timeline (if one studies it the Shinsengumi narrative emerges).
Hopefully by writing an e-book, visitors will be able to have everything in
front of them and will be able to understand the Shinsengumi and their
world better.

It took all of us many years of growth, research and reflection on not
only the Shinsengumi but Aizu-han as well to realize that our fansite can
be a helpful starting point for people who have just discovered the
fascinating/notorious/controversial Shinsengumi.

The site will move to a new server and will continue to host fanwork,
art, vids, stories etc.

This summer, 2008, a first draft of the book will be completed and
undergo an editing process.

We would also like to throw a "re-opening" party if possible and look
forward to reconnecting with everyone.

~secretarytocapt3