[Oa] OA Web Link List & Pattern Project

[Ken & Diane Neely]

     Hello OA community!  I don’t know how many of you are on the
distribution list.  My name is Ken, and I have been involved with OA
off and on since the early '80s when I had my first chance encounter
with one of Masahiro’s first books in a Walden’s book store.  Since
that time I have enjoyed this craft immensely, usually creating a
different OA card each year as our family Christmas card, or creating
cards here and there for birthdays, Valentines, for the dog to eat
:-), just-for-the-fun-of-it, etc.

     Over the years I had accumulated a lot of web links and electronic
versions of OA patterns, along with a good number of books. 
Unfortunately, due to a series of unfortunate circumstances over
time, I have lost a majority of those web links and electronic
versions.  I had a lightening strike, a series of system hard drive
crashes, and all of my supposedly good backups have turned out to be
corrupt for one reason or another.

     So, I am in the process of trying to rebuild a new OA link list. 
Attached is a pdf document containing a current list that I have put
together of those sites that I think are of sufficient merit to be
included in the list.  From these sites I hope to start downloading a
pattern library once again; a slow process that hopefully I will be
able to start sometime in the near future.  (Unfortunately I had to
put the list into a pdf document because the mail systems I am
working with were considering such a long list of links within an
e-mail as spam, and thus were dropping the e-mail.)

     Here is where I ask for your help, as follows:

- Rather than being a tad selfish, like I was in the past (I apologize for
that), I want to make sure this time that this link list is shared with,
added to, and supported by all of you in the OA community.  Since I do not
currently have a web site of my own I was thinking that maybe one of the
more popular sites, such as Evermore, could host the “master” OA list.

- If you have, or know of a site that is not included in this list, then
please let me know so that it can be checked out for worthiness to be
included.  My personal preference would be to include sites that have, or
add, some unique characteristic to OA.

- If you have, or know of sites that contain downloadable patterns, then
please let me know as I have a pattern library to rebuild.  (Can you hear
me crying over the loss of literally hundreds upon hundreds of patterns?) 
Perhaps on the master link list a designator could be added that would
indicate if the site contained downloadable patterns.

- Here is a potential idea: A centralized OA pattern database to which any
artist could contribute and share their patterns.  Hopefully this would
help to alleviate the problem of patterns being lost to the OA community
over time.

- Here is a potential idea:  Rather than strictly the use of this OA
mailing list, what would be the possibility of establishing an online
forum for OA discussions?

     Thanks for taking time out to read through all of this.  It is my
desire to make sure that this craft, this artistic expression, known
globally as origamic architecture (or kirigami / pop-ups / greeting
card sculpture design / folding cut maps, or whatever else in
whatever language), is encouraged to new generations of future paper
crafters and does not slowly fade away.  I will try to send out some
future e-mails on such topics such as where / how to locate OA books,
and paper sculpture links and paper automata links (for those who may
be interested in such as well).
Thanks again.  Ken.  (kneely at icdc.com)  Enjoy.
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