APRO (founded by Jim Lorenzen and Coral Lorenzen) was one of the most prominent early UFO research groups.
In 2011, Richard Heiden and the Open Minds website helpfully made scans of many issues of APRO's "APRO Bulletin" available online (supplemented with a second batch subsequently uploaded). The original upload on the Open Minds website was accompanied by a brief article which provided some background for anyone unfamiliar with APRO or the APRO Bulletin (with some minor inaccuracies in its comments regarding APRO's files).
Some issues of the APRO Bulletin were unfortunately missing from the scans released on the Open Minds website and the scans were imperfect.
Back in 2015-2016, I therefore looked into obtaining a better set of scans.
I found that sets of the APRO Bulletin had been scanned by the AFU in Sweden, SCEAU in France, CUFOS in the USA, Open Minds in the USA and other UFO groups/researchers - but held in private.
Due to overlapping private efforts by various UFO groups/researchers that they were willing to share with me, I ended up with 8 different copies of some issues of the APRO Bulletin.
(This was the main stimulus for my seeking to do a bit to help coordinate scanning and dissemination of UFO material within the UFO community, which has subsequently paid pretty good dividends by placing an emphasis on obtaining permission to share material online so that the private reinvention of the wheel was reduced...).
As a result of the various separate scans, I was able to put together a set of the APRO Bulletin which fills in various gaps in the Open Minds collection and I think has a significantly better quality than the set their team kindly shared online.
Incidentally, I also changed the file names of each issue from the various scans provided to me to make it easier to organise the material and combine/compare different scans. (I realise that discussing file-naming may be boring to some of you but, trust me, spending time renaming the files is even more boring. But without sensible file names, even more time can be wasted looking to find relevant material in the future...).
The bulk of the scans in this collection were produced by the AFU in Sweden. Some gaps were filled by SCEAU in France and by Rob Swiatek in the USA.
No gaps in the collection are obvious in relation to the period _after_ "Volume 1, Issue 1" (and no gaps in the relevant list have been identified by Barry Greenwood, Mary Castner of CUFOS, Rob Swiatek, Rod Dyke or other collectors/researchers that kindly responded to my requests in 2016 for them to check if they had any further issues).
However, in relation to the period _before_ the "Volume 1, Issue 1" of July 1952, I and others noted that page 2 of that issue includes a section entitled "The Editorial" that begins with the following material that refers to earlier issues:
"As we go to press (or should we say mimeo) this July 15th, we have decided that it would be only proper to renumber the bulletin issues beginning with this one, and call it Volume I, Number I, inasmuch as the old system of ditto has been discarded and we now have a mimeograph machine at our command". So far, no-one I've contacted has said that they have any of issues before "Volume 1, Number ".
Rod Dyke was able to find some further information in his "Laimon Mitris correspondence file". (Laimon Mitris corresponded with Coral Lorenzen/APRO, Adamski, Scully, Bender, Barker, et al). He found the following information regarding the earlier bulletins:
[1] A letter from Coral Lorenzen to Laimon Mitris dated June 30, 1952 noted "We have no back bulletins to issue, but the July 15th bulletin is a big one and a review from January 1952, will be included". It therefore seems that the earlier issues date back to at least January 1952.
[2] The same letter from Coral Lorezen stated "...and have purchased our own new mimeograph machine, and are looking forward to the day when we can have the bulletin printed."
[3] A 3 page undated ditto copy of the APRO Constitution noted: "Article thirteen: APRO BULLETINS: The bulletins which to begin with, will be semi-monthly, will consist of two major parts: FACT and THEORY." (NB: Rod Dyke thought she probably meant bi-monthly)
Rod Dyke also noted that the July 15, 1952 bulletin editorial (on page 2) referred after talking about the old ditto to "... the lack of disc news prior to April ...". Rod wondered whether this a reference to an April bulletin, or an March/April bulletin?
Rod Dyke's feeling was that the bulletins may have started in January 1952 and restarted with the July 1952 renumbering; thus if bi-monthly, we may be looking for just 3 ditto issues [Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/Jun].
In any event, if anyone has any issues before "Volume 1, Issue 1" then I, and several others, would be delighted to hear about it.
(Since no one has seemed to object to the APRO Bulletin being on the Open Minds website, or the improved scans quietly being released on the AFU website a few years ago, I think it is probably okay for me to draw the availability of this resource to the attention of the UFO community).
In 2011, Richard Heiden and the Open Minds website helpfully made scans of many issues of APRO's "APRO Bulletin" available online (supplemented with a second batch subsequently uploaded). The original upload on the Open Minds website was accompanied by a brief article which provided some background for anyone unfamiliar with APRO or the APRO Bulletin (with some minor inaccuracies in its comments regarding APRO's files).
Some issues of the APRO Bulletin were unfortunately missing from the scans released on the Open Minds website and the scans were imperfect.
Back in 2015-2016, I therefore looked into obtaining a better set of scans.
I found that sets of the APRO Bulletin had been scanned by the AFU in Sweden, SCEAU in France, CUFOS in the USA, Open Minds in the USA and other UFO groups/researchers - but held in private.
Due to overlapping private efforts by various UFO groups/researchers that they were willing to share with me, I ended up with 8 different copies of some issues of the APRO Bulletin.
(This was the main stimulus for my seeking to do a bit to help coordinate scanning and dissemination of UFO material within the UFO community, which has subsequently paid pretty good dividends by placing an emphasis on obtaining permission to share material online so that the private reinvention of the wheel was reduced...).
As a result of the various separate scans, I was able to put together a set of the APRO Bulletin which fills in various gaps in the Open Minds collection and I think has a significantly better quality than the set their team kindly shared online.
Incidentally, I also changed the file names of each issue from the various scans provided to me to make it easier to organise the material and combine/compare different scans. (I realise that discussing file-naming may be boring to some of you but, trust me, spending time renaming the files is even more boring. But without sensible file names, even more time can be wasted looking to find relevant material in the future...).
The bulk of the scans in this collection were produced by the AFU in Sweden. Some gaps were filled by SCEAU in France and by Rob Swiatek in the USA.
No gaps in the collection are obvious in relation to the period _after_ "Volume 1, Issue 1" (and no gaps in the relevant list have been identified by Barry Greenwood, Mary Castner of CUFOS, Rob Swiatek, Rod Dyke or other collectors/researchers that kindly responded to my requests in 2016 for them to check if they had any further issues).
However, in relation to the period _before_ the "Volume 1, Issue 1" of July 1952, I and others noted that page 2 of that issue includes a section entitled "The Editorial" that begins with the following material that refers to earlier issues:
"As we go to press (or should we say mimeo) this July 15th, we have decided that it would be only proper to renumber the bulletin issues beginning with this one, and call it Volume I, Number I, inasmuch as the old system of ditto has been discarded and we now have a mimeograph machine at our command". So far, no-one I've contacted has said that they have any of issues before "Volume 1, Number ".
Rod Dyke was able to find some further information in his "Laimon Mitris correspondence file". (Laimon Mitris corresponded with Coral Lorenzen/APRO, Adamski, Scully, Bender, Barker, et al). He found the following information regarding the earlier bulletins:
[1] A letter from Coral Lorenzen to Laimon Mitris dated June 30, 1952 noted "We have no back bulletins to issue, but the July 15th bulletin is a big one and a review from January 1952, will be included". It therefore seems that the earlier issues date back to at least January 1952.
[2] The same letter from Coral Lorezen stated "...and have purchased our own new mimeograph machine, and are looking forward to the day when we can have the bulletin printed."
[3] A 3 page undated ditto copy of the APRO Constitution noted: "Article thirteen: APRO BULLETINS: The bulletins which to begin with, will be semi-monthly, will consist of two major parts: FACT and THEORY." (NB: Rod Dyke thought she probably meant bi-monthly)
Rod Dyke also noted that the July 15, 1952 bulletin editorial (on page 2) referred after talking about the old ditto to "... the lack of disc news prior to April ...". Rod wondered whether this a reference to an April bulletin, or an March/April bulletin?
Rod Dyke's feeling was that the bulletins may have started in January 1952 and restarted with the July 1952 renumbering; thus if bi-monthly, we may be looking for just 3 ditto issues [Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/Jun].
In any event, if anyone has any issues before "Volume 1, Issue 1" then I, and several others, would be delighted to hear about it.
(Since no one has seemed to object to the APRO Bulletin being on the Open Minds website, or the improved scans quietly being released on the AFU website a few years ago, I think it is probably okay for me to draw the availability of this resource to the attention of the UFO community).
Click on the image below for a link to the folder containing this set of the "APRO Bulletin".
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