The Berlitz School of Sherlockian Bibliography
By Don Hobbs

I am in San Diego for the next fortnight. Every year at this time, my company brings me to San Diego to test new software before it is ready for release. I estimate I was here 12 weeks last year and would not mind repeating that again this year. There are far worse places to spend a 12 week all expense paid vacation. I look at it as time spent in paradise.

I have never been one to let work get too much in the way of Sherlocking so I have made good use of my time at the office. I made sure that that I had an updated copy of The Galactic Sherlock Holmes database when I packed up for southern California. My office is like The United Nations and on the first day, I was already busy asking for help, Sherlockian help that is. Hui Shen, one of our software engineers, was able to translate the missing bibliographic information for a dozen of my Chinese books. She is now working on the remaining books. Hui grew up outside of Beijing. She remembers reading Sherlock Holmes stories as a teenager. Her brother still lives in China and Hui thinks he might be able to find more Chinese translations. She told me that he has always collected things and he will understand my collecting mania.

Chris Franklin is a fellow Texan and software engineer living in San Diego and is married to a Russian woman. He took a copy of the files that contains the 38 Russian editions for which I still need bibliographic information. He also put me in contact with Leo Findgold.  Leo is an elderly man who is American and also a Russian linguist. Leo has already emailed me, expressing his willingness to help along with Chris’ wife.  Kremen Kolev is a programmer and a Bulgarian. He has already translated all of my Bulgarian books and now is offering to help with the Russian books.

The next recruit was yet another software engineer. Rupal Mehta is from India and her native tongue is Guajarati. She also remembers reading Sherlock Holmes as a child in India. Rupal also has friend who speak Marathi and Arabic so she took a copy of those two language files. She might know someone that can complete the Bengali section as well.

I came to San Diego needing information on 139 books. If everything goes as planned, when I leave on Friday, I will only need information on 39! I still need help with Burmese, Farsi, Greek, Hebrew, Thai, Ukrainian, and Uzbek. Someone who will help with Hebrew has contacted me recently but nothing is confirmed yet. I am very grateful for everyone how has helped me so far.

I hope to hear from readers that can help.

Happy Collecting!!