What is a Slide Folio Circuit?

A "folio secretary" administers the circulation of mail folios. He has the names and addresses of people on the list. In our case that's about 22 at the moment. For reasons that are not completely evident, the route list is divided into two groups - "A" and "B". This probably assists with moderating the control of the folios progressing around the circuit. Folios can get bunched up if everyone doesn't pass them on with a roughly equal processing time.

On the Australian cicuit, there are six folios in circulation at any one time. Numbered 1 to 6. Each folio takes about 6 months to circulate, so you receive a folio about once per month.

Here it is in "ASCII-VISION":


          -------------<-------------
         |                           |
         V                           |
         |                           ^
    Folio Secretary                  |
         |                           |
    Route List Group A (11 people)   |
         |                           |
    Folio Secretary                  |
         |                           |
    Route List B (11 people)         ^
         |                           |
         V                           |
         |_____________ >____________|

So the Folio Secretary has to have his wits about him. He monitors circulation times, and sends out folios so that there is a resonable delay between them, even though he may receive them all bunched up, only a few days apart perhaps.

Each folio comes in the mail, from the previous person on the route list. The boxes used are plastic lunch boxes that are meant for school kids lunches. They last a while. Each folio has about 22 slides in it, including yours that was submitted 6 months previously (that's the round-trip circulation time). Each slide is placed in a special paper sleeve that folds up to protect it. On the sleeve, you fill out the slide title, technical details (like focal length, film, camera, tripod, light conditions) and any notes regarding the scene (place and time, points of interest). There is a large blank space on the slide-sleeve for other people in the circuit to make comments on your slide. This is the best part. It's great to read the comments people make. It makes the whole thing much more worth-while.

Also in the folio is a small note book. The book has the route list details in it (on a pasted-in sheet so it can easily be updated by the folio secretary). It also has a list of the current folio contents (you add in the slide-title and your name each time you submit a slide, and cross-out the previous record of your entry from six months ago.) The rest of the book is for any discussion points or other more general comments. Usually it takes some years to fill a note book up.

Each person should process the folio within 3 or 4 days of receiving it.

It is preferred for people to also send a post-card to the folio secretary each time someone posts a folio. This way the folio secreatry can "track" the progress of the folios around the circuit.

I slighty finer point about the system - people don't get to see all the comments made by all the people. That is, the slide submitted by the person prior to yourself on the list has no comments on it, but the slide submitted by the person after you on the list will have comments from everyone who made them.

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