The first volunteers set to work at the Pathfinder building in New York December 14 at computer work stations are from Michigan, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania in the United States, and Australia and Canada. They will be joined by many others through Christmas Eve when the project will be completed. A social is being planned for Saturday evening, December 16, and a combined celebration and holiday dinner December 24. In preparation for this effort, printshop staff and several volunteers from New York mobilized on December 9 to count all the Pathfinder inventory and update records. The effort is being organized out of the New York Garment District hall, which houses Pathfinder Books in the garment center.
Volunteers work in teams of two, reading, typing, and checking all the information entered.
Through this project in which thousands of hours of voluntary labor will be freely given to make possible this stage of the transformation of the production of revolutionary literature, Pathfinder's records necessary for inventory control, order fulfillment, and bookkeeping will be transplanted onto the publisher's computer network. Keeping the accounts and customer records has until now required a number of stand-alone computers running software that was incompatible with the network. Sandler, who led the team of Pathfinder supporters who set up and staffed a booth at the Guadalajara book fair from November 25 to December 3, has worked since the fair ended to solicit volunteers for the project. The New York and New Jersey Socialist Workers Party branches and Young Socialists are organizing forums, classes, and social activities, including a wind-up Christmas Eve social, as part of hosting the project volunteers. Among other publications in the pipeline, and alongside an ongoing program of reprints, the English-language Pathfinder was Born with the October Revolution has just rolled off the sheetfed presses.